To Love and Heal (The Power of Love Series) Read online

  Anna laughed. "Pretty much – and she would actually take that as a compliment."

  They both smiled easily, and Anna couldn't help but notice how his pale gray eyes were even lighter and more magnetic in the afternoon sun. Suddenly, his relaxed expression was replaced with a tight jaw and creased forehead. The transformation was so instantaneous that Anna wondered if she had said something wrong, until she realized that she hadn't actually spoken again. A faint rhythmic pounding – barely perceptible a few moments ago – grew louder as Caleb's face became increasingly strained. Anna turned around and looked up at the sky, a gray speck coming into view as it passed over the tree line. Despite flying at a relatively high altitude, the sound grew almost deafening as the helicopter passed overhead. She turned back to Caleb, whose face was unmoving and eyes vacant as though he had checked out of his own body. As the glass in his hand began to tip, she grabbed it out of his grip, still eliciting no response.

  "Caleb …"

  The sound began to dim and soon evaporated as the helicopter passed out of an audible range. Anna waited several more moments, her mind racing as to what she should do next. Walk away quietly and leave him alone, rather than making matters worse by trying to get his attention? Ask him what was wrong and if there was anything she could do to help? The third option seemed to come into its own without allowing her the chance to fully think it through. Instead, she instinctively reached over and gently touched his arm. Caleb flinched, followed by a quick gasp for air as recognition returned to his face. He looked down at his hand as though expecting to find his drink.

  "Here," Anna said quietly as their eyes met. She could sense that there was so much he wanted – perhaps needed – to say, yet nothing was forthcoming. But she was relieved to see the color start to return to his face. "Caleb," she began haltingly. "If you ever want to talk about anything−"

  "I'm fine," he declared, though his slightly dazed expression said otherwise.

  "All right then," she said quietly, her eyes boring into his in an attempt to nonverbally communicate to him that she knew there was more to the story.

  As he silently resumed working as though she was no longer there, Anna could only surmise: And what a story it must be.

  Anna stared at the computer screen, an unblinking Merlin staring back as her screensaver. The real Merlin purred contently from his usual perch on the computer tower, the only familiar sight that could prompt her to smile at the moment. Her thoughts were too cluttered with both confusion and concern over Caleb's earlier reaction to a helicopter flying overhead, and it had occurred to her that perhaps an explanation was as close as her computer keyboard. She waited several moments after typing "Caleb Brown+Afghanistan War", then finally hit the enter button, her heart surging as the screen lit up with relevant links. She took a deep breath, then clicked on the first one.

  As the headline popped up, she instinctively reached up and gently scratched Merlin behind the ears, drawing comfort from their shared bond.

  U.S. Marine Corps pilot awarded Bronze Star for courage under fire

  Marine Captain Caleb Brown was recently awarded the Bronze Star for his heroic actions during the War in Afghanistan. Brown was piloting a CASEVAC helicopter on a mission to rescue wounded soldiers in Kandahar, Afghanistan, during an active ground engagement with the enemy. Despite being surrounded by heavy fire, Brown managed to land the Super Stallion safely and the crew immediately evacuated to transport the wounded soldiers on board. While approaching an unconscious soldier on the field, Medical Corpsman Daniel Traverse was shot in the leg and shoulder. At great risk to his personal safety, Brown ran through intense enemy fire and dragged Traverse back towards the helicopter. As he helped his crewmember aboard, a mortar exploded at close range, sending shrapnel into his back. Yet despite severe wounds, he ran back to the unconscious soldier, again braving heavy fire as he pulled him to safety.

  Anna sat back in her chair and took a deep breath. There was more to the article as it detailed the medal ceremony that resulted from Caleb's actions, but right now she had a full plate of revelations to digest, and her emotions were stripped raw. She closed her eyes, reluctantly yet unavoidably visualizing the gut-wrenching scenario depicted in the article. Caleb's back ripped apart by shrapnel, a no doubt excruciatingly painful injury, and yet he pushed through it to rescue two others under circumstances that could have easily resulted in his own death. She had read less than 150 words, yet it nevertheless spoke volumes about the kind of man that Caleb was. And she felt woefully inept in comparing her courage quotient to his. She had empathy for all living creatures – down to the spider in her living room that she had scooped up in a cup and released outside just a few hours ago – but she couldn't even fathom running directly into a shower of bullets to drag someone to safety. Even if it were a loved one and she was willing to sacrifice herself on their behalf, would her body be able to take direction from her mind, or would she be so frozen by fear that the only step she could take would be backwards as her knees gave way?

  "You can't know how you'd react under those circumstances," Tina said later that evening as they met for dinner at a small, dimly lit Italian restaurant. "People find strength they never knew they had in a crisis situation. I'm sure you've heard about someone suddenly having superhuman strength and lifting a car off someone in an accident." She paused to nod at Anna's bare arms. "Although I don't think those twigs would be able to even grab a fender without snapping into two."

  "Very funny," Anna replied, knowing well that her arms were far from Herculean, but still had enough muscle tone to disqualify them as twigs. "As long as they're strong enough to lift a computer mouse, I'm still in business."

  Tina raised her glass of wine. "Here here."

  Anna clinked the glass with her own, but as it caught a reflection of the table candlelight, her smile faded as an image flashed in her mind of Caleb inadvertently removing his shirt by the campfire. Knowing now the story behind his scars did little to quell the unease in her stomach.

  "Stop doing that," Tina chided.

  "Doing what?"

  "Thinking."

  Anna smiled sadly. I've tried that, but my mind has a mind of its own."

  "You must really care about this guy."

  Anna twirled the spaghetti on her plate in an effort to delay her reply. "I just feel bad for what he's been through," she finally said.

  Tina looked unconvinced. "Oh, I think there's a lot more to it than that."

  "Eat your lasagna," Anna pretended to chide in an obvious attempt to deflect Tina's observation.

  "Just saying …"

  Anna reluctantly smiled, realizing that Tina knew her all too well … and yes, her feelings for Caleb were very real − and growing.

  Caleb watched through the gatehouse window as lights flickered on in Anna's house. It was 9:30 p.m., not late by any means, but he still felt relieved knowing that she was safely home – even if he still had no idea where she had gone or with whom. Not that she owed him an explanation, he realized. It was just that it was a dangerous world and horrible, unpredictable things happened to people all of the time. At least they did in the world that he had come to know in the last few years. He turned away from the window, unease pulling at him as he wondered if she had in fact been out on a date. A few days ago while rummaging through the bathroom medicine cabinet for a bandage after the slip of a sheetrock knife, he had inadvertently come across a container of birth control pills. He had immediately felt intrusive, and yet it also had put a question mark in his head that he did his best to shove aside with an exclamation point.

  He glanced back out the window one more time, then closed the blinds. It was none of his business, nothing he needed to concern himself with … he had enough crap to deal with right now without all the rollercoaster highs and accompanying lows of caring for someone in that way. She was safely home – that's all he needed to know.

  A hot, muscle-soothing shower a short time later helped to disperse Caleb's knotted thou
ghts, and he began to breathe easier as he opened a bureau drawer to pull out a folded tee-shirt and jeans. Reaching inside, his hand landed on something cold and hard, its significance immediately pulling at his stomach and violently erasing his semi-relaxed state. Against his better judgment, he extracted the object from the drawer and stared as it rested in the palm of his hand. The Bronze Star … a symbol of bravery and courage, and yet he felt no more deserving of such an honor than many of the soldiers who served beside him during the course of his three tours in Afghanistan. He had witnessed selfless acts of heroism on a regular basis, and felt the only reason he was deemed more qualified for an award was that he had the unfortunate timing to step in front of an exploding mortar shell.

  He closed his eyes, images of wounded and lifeless fellow soldiers flashing frame by frame in his mind, some whom he had met for the first time as they were zipped into body bags, others who were not anonymous soldiers but also friends, laughing and joking beside him one moment, silenced by a bullet or bomb the next.

  Caleb clasped the medal inside his closed fist, sweat forming beads on his forehead before trickling downwards. And the question that kept coming back … the four words that had refused to vacate his mind, if not his soul: Was it worth it?

  THREE

  Anna hummed to herself as she unpacked groceries, pausing to apologize to Merlin as he cocked his head to the side. "What's the matter – is my humming as bad as my singing?"

  As if on cue, Merlin meowed, and Anna reached down to scratch him on the head. It was a lazy Saturday afternoon, and the sound of male voices sailed in through the open screen window over the kitchen sink. Moving towards the window to get a closer look, she spotted Caleb and another man sitting in the lawn chairs. With a white tee-shirt and camouflage pants, it didn't take long to figure out the visitor's connection to Caleb. With the mid-afternoon sun bearing down and no drinks in their hands, Anna hesitated momentarily before opening the back entrance and peeking her head out.

  "Would you guys like something to drink?"

  They looked over at her simultaneously, Caleb's friend looking back at him as if to say, "Who's that?"

  "Sure," Caleb replied. "What's on the menu?"

  "I have iced tea, soda, lemonade … let's see … Crystal Light …"

  The two men exchanged horrified glances for effect.

  "Crystal Light," Caleb's friend repeated with mock disdain. "I don't suppose you have any beer stashed away between the iced tea and lemonade."

  "White wine?" Anna offered, doubt in her voice.

  Caleb laughed – the first time she had ever actually heard him do so. It was a low, hearty sound that both surprised and pleased her.

  "No worries," he said as he rose from his chair. "I was planning to run out and get some beers anyways. This is Joel, by the way."

  Acknowledging the introduction, Anna came out to greet him. They could almost be brothers, she surmised as she noticed their striking physical similarities, but the likeness ended there. Joel's affable, outgoing personality was channeled through his vigorous handshake and gregarious smile. The thought flashed through her mind that perhaps Caleb had once been as equally happy-go-lucky … before circumstances had erased at least part of that from his being.

  "Here, why don't you keep my seat warm until I get back," he offered to Anna.

  "I don't want to interrupt you guys–"

  "Please," Joel said, rolling his eyes. "The view from my chair will be quite an improvement."

  "Hey!" Caleb growled, clearly joking as he gave Joel a quick shove while his eyes still honed in on Anna. "Watch your step or someone's going to get hurt, and it ain't going to be me."

  "You mean you'd hit a woman?" Joel deadpanned as Caleb shook his head and then grasped Joel's hand in an impromptu handshake as if to signal his threat was for naught. They shared a history – that much she could see. And if it was forged in Afghanistan, then chances were it wasn't exactly a happy one.

  "So how long have you known Caleb?" Anna asked as she settled into the lawn chair soon after Caleb's departure.

  "Just over a year. He was already into his third tour of duty when my reserve unit was sent over."

  "Wow – it seems like you guys have known each other a lot longer."

  Joel's lighthearted smile began to falter, and she could sense the deliberate effort that was needed to refuel it. "Well, time takes on a life of its own when you're in a war zone. A single day can feel like the equivalent of a year when all your senses are on high alert from the moment you wake up to the second you fall asleep. Heck, it even stays that way in your dreams when you're in that mode. Has Caleb told you about his time over there?"

  Anna shook her head, explaining what she was able to dig up on her own after his troubling reaction to the helicopter. "But I still feel like I don't know the whole story," she added.

  "And if were up to him, you probably never would. To be honest, I don't know how guys like him handle multiple deployments. I've been over there once, and let me tell you – I don't think I'm ever going to look at life the same way again."

  "Were you a pilot like Caleb?"

  "I was a medical corpsman assigned to the same Super Stallion. That guy literally saved my ass a dozen times and then some."

  "How so?"

  "We were on a Casevac helicopter, which means our mission was to rescue wounded soldiers on the battlefield in combat conditions. So unlike the Medevac helicopters, we were armed − and let's just say we took a lot of fire every time we went out there, and we gave just as much back. More than once I was convinced that I wasn't going to get out alive. Any lesser of a pilot and I wouldn't have. We took a round of enemy fire once and the chopper started going down. I had just been sent over and it was my first rescue mission – talk about trial by fire. You have no idea how easy it is to lose control of that chunk of metal when everything's going haywire and the stick is pulling your hand in five different directions. I don't think he even broke a sweat. I sure as hell did – all I could think about was my wife back home and our two-year-old son. I was literally saying goodbye to them in my thoughts. Then Caleb tells us – perfectly calm, mind you – to brace for impact. He managed to pull the chopper over a ridge and away from enemy fire – all the while that it was going down. We took a hard landing and everyone got jostled around pretty good. Caleb took a piece of metal to the face, was bleeding so bad it looked like he stepped off the set of Chainsaw Massacre. But he was immediately on the radio giving our coordinates for rescue, making sure everyone was okay and basically completely oblivious to his own injuries. That was my very first impression of him. And it's never changed."

  An image of Caleb, bleeding profusely from what now was a scar, seared through Anna's mind and grabbed at her stomach. She felt almost protective of him … and yet the reality was that her only real connection to him was that of someone who hired him to do a job. At least that was no doubt how he viewed her, even if her heart was starting to feel more.

  "I wish he could find comfort out of the fact that other people are alive because of him," she said quietly.

  "It's human nature, I suppose. I think his mind keeps going back to the one that couldn't be saved."

  "What do you mean?"

  Joel hesitated for several moments. "It's not something that he's ever going to want to talk to you about, I can tell you that."

  "And I don't want to pry … but maybe it will help me better understand where he's coming from."

  Several moments of silence passed. "It was about three months into my deployment. We were sent out on a rescue mission, and one of medical corpsman was this young kid, Dwayne. He had just been sent over on his first tour, had been there maybe two weeks. His wife was about to give birth to their first child, and he was over the moon. We headed out to rescue a wounded pilot and copilot of a downed Apache chopper. Enemy fire everywhere, but Caleb still managed to get to the chopper and land without taking any hits. The pilots were pretty badly injured but still alive and doing what
they could to hold off a few Taliban stragglers that were sniping at them. We managed to get them on the chopper, but not before more Taliban fighters came up over the hills and started shooting at us. I was inside starting a blood transfusion for the copilot who was going to into shock, and Caleb was climbing back on board with Dwayne behind him. When he heard the shots, Caleb jumped out and fired a few rounds, told Dwayne he had him covered and to get inside. A second later Caleb took a bullet to the helmet. The impact started to knock him backwards, and that's when Dwayne …"

  Anna's eyes began to sting, a foreboding of what had happened next.

  Joel took a deep breath and stared up at the sky, waiting until he could collect himself.

  "Dwayne thought Caleb had been wounded so he jumped back out and pushed him on the ground, basically covering him with his own body. A second later, he was hit by gunfire. If he hadn't done what he did, it would have been Caleb instead. It all happened so fast … the rest of us jumped out of the chopper to hold off the enemy when we realized what was happening, but it was too late for Dwayne. Caleb was holding him and telling him to hang on, but he died in his arms.

  Anna dabbed at her eyes with the palm of her hand. "So you think he blames himself for Dwayne's death."

  Joel nodded. "I know he does. That's the kind of soldier − the kind of man − that Caleb is. He felt it was his responsibility to keep everyone safe on that mission, and the last thing he would ever want to happen is for someone to sacrifice their life for him. And I think the fact that Dwayne was so young and still had so much ahead of him … it just adds salt to the wound."

  "Has anyone suggested to him that he go talk to someone about this?"

  "Sure, but he thinks it's pointless. It's not going to bring Dwayne back, and it's not going to change the fact that he couldn't save him."

  Anna shook her head, a deep sadness settling over her. A story like this would be enough to darken her day if she had read it in a newspaper … that it pertained to Caleb crushed her heart. "It's like he's punishing himself."