Read Online In Case of Emergency by Courtney Moreno - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Courtney Moreno
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trained in home lice removal—don’t get me started on that, I quit after one day—and answered an egg donation ad.”
“I’ve heard that’s really painful.”
“It is—don’t ever do it. I’ll spare you the details since we’re about to eat, but I got fifteen thousand for it.”
“Where did you move from?”
“Wisconsin. You know, cows. They play any pranks on you yet?”
“No, but they don’t really have to.”
She cocks her head to one side, interested. So I tell her about snapping the elastic of the pediatric oxygen mask I heroically managed to place on the 250-pound man, putting gloves on backward and in the wrong size, filling out my birth date instead of the patient’s on paperwork, and staringblankly at a cursing car thief. The reward for my self-deprecation is the way her mercurial eyes lock on my face as I spin one story after another. She laughs in all the right places.
“Sounds about right,” she says when I stop to catch my breath. “You’re lucky. In the military, you would have earned some awful nickname by now.”
The waitress arrives, and we lean back as our plates are placed in front of us.
“The military?”
Her fingers hover over an enormous hummus wrap, as if deciding how best to capture it. “I was in the army, did two tours in Iraq.” She saws the wrap in half, ignores her fork, and takes a bite out of one triangulated edge. Swallowing, she says, “One guy I knew was obsessed with adding hillbilly armor to the piece-of-shit Humvees we had. I’m talking plywood, chunks of two-by-fours, sandbags, scrap metal, anything he could find. Sometimes he’d just sit and tack welds onto it, as if the extra cauterization would help.” She snorts. “He would have pulled into a scrap yard in the middle of a mission if we’d let him.”
Taken aback by this new information, I ask the first question that comes to mind. “What was his nickname?”
“We called him ‘A-Team.’ For the time he did something incredibly stupid, but fortunately it worked out really well.” She pauses. “Funny, I can’t remember what it was.”
I run my tongue over my teeth to sweep for bits of arugula, and she continues, telling me between swallows that she got an honorable discharge for injury. “It was bad when I first got back,” she says. “I had nightmares all the time.” She picks up the second half of her wrap, stares into the face of it, sets it back down.
“And now?”
She shrugs. “I got discharged in 2006. So, what? Almost six years.” Picking up her paper napkin, she folds and refolds it until she’s holding a thickwhite square. “It’s not gone, never will be, but at least it’s better. These days the only thing I have nightmares about is the giant teddy bear that likes to chase me down the street, but I’ve had those since I was a kid.”
I’m drawn to how frank she is, but this time I don’t buy it. “What—”
“TBI. Traumatic brain injury.” She starts to shrug but falters. Her expression has shifted—what was warm is now wary—and her eyes are flat. Her voice is so emotionless she could be talking about anything. I remember how I used to casually tell people that my ex had been fucking my friend behind my back, as if I could make it a small and unimportant thing that way. There’s also something in her voice I can’t quite place: a challenge. Like she’s saying, If you think you’re interested in me, you need to know these things, and then maybe think again.
We stare at each other for what feels likes several minutes—that weird close-up that happens when you’re looking into someone’s eyes and some part of your brain hits the zoom button. Her eyes are green-gold streaks flecked with amber, a mix of wistfulness and resolve, and I can see her respond to the empathy that is swelling in me, see her soften and even look a little frightened, until she breaks the eye contact and shifts in her seat.
The table suddenly seems wider between us. Finally, I
“I’ve heard that’s really painful.”
“It is—don’t ever do it. I’ll spare you the details since we’re about to eat, but I got fifteen thousand for it.”
“Where did you move from?”
“Wisconsin. You know, cows. They play any pranks on you yet?”
“No, but they don’t really have to.”
She cocks her head to one side, interested. So I tell her about snapping the elastic of the pediatric oxygen mask I heroically managed to place on the 250-pound man, putting gloves on backward and in the wrong size, filling out my birth date instead of the patient’s on paperwork, and staringblankly at a cursing car thief. The reward for my self-deprecation is the way her mercurial eyes lock on my face as I spin one story after another. She laughs in all the right places.
“Sounds about right,” she says when I stop to catch my breath. “You’re lucky. In the military, you would have earned some awful nickname by now.”
The waitress arrives, and we lean back as our plates are placed in front of us.
“The military?”
Her fingers hover over an enormous hummus wrap, as if deciding how best to capture it. “I was in the army, did two tours in Iraq.” She saws the wrap in half, ignores her fork, and takes a bite out of one triangulated edge. Swallowing, she says, “One guy I knew was obsessed with adding hillbilly armor to the piece-of-shit Humvees we had. I’m talking plywood, chunks of two-by-fours, sandbags, scrap metal, anything he could find. Sometimes he’d just sit and tack welds onto it, as if the extra cauterization would help.” She snorts. “He would have pulled into a scrap yard in the middle of a mission if we’d let him.”
Taken aback by this new information, I ask the first question that comes to mind. “What was his nickname?”
“We called him ‘A-Team.’ For the time he did something incredibly stupid, but fortunately it worked out really well.” She pauses. “Funny, I can’t remember what it was.”
I run my tongue over my teeth to sweep for bits of arugula, and she continues, telling me between swallows that she got an honorable discharge for injury. “It was bad when I first got back,” she says. “I had nightmares all the time.” She picks up the second half of her wrap, stares into the face of it, sets it back down.
“And now?”
She shrugs. “I got discharged in 2006. So, what? Almost six years.” Picking up her paper napkin, she folds and refolds it until she’s holding a thickwhite square. “It’s not gone, never will be, but at least it’s better. These days the only thing I have nightmares about is the giant teddy bear that likes to chase me down the street, but I’ve had those since I was a kid.”
I’m drawn to how frank she is, but this time I don’t buy it. “What—”
“TBI. Traumatic brain injury.” She starts to shrug but falters. Her expression has shifted—what was warm is now wary—and her eyes are flat. Her voice is so emotionless she could be talking about anything. I remember how I used to casually tell people that my ex had been fucking my friend behind my back, as if I could make it a small and unimportant thing that way. There’s also something in her voice I can’t quite place: a challenge. Like she’s saying, If you think you’re interested in me, you need to know these things, and then maybe think again.
We stare at each other for what feels likes several minutes—that weird close-up that happens when you’re looking into someone’s eyes and some part of your brain hits the zoom button. Her eyes are green-gold streaks flecked with amber, a mix of wistfulness and resolve, and I can see her respond to the empathy that is swelling in me, see her soften and even look a little frightened, until she breaks the eye contact and shifts in her seat.
The table suddenly seems wider between us. Finally, I
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