Read Online We Are All Made of Stars by Rowan Coleman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Rowan Coleman
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didnât want me any more, I discovered I didnât want to be me.
And from the outside, everything looks if not good then OK. Itâs eighteen months since a rocket launch attack killed one and injured three in his unit. Eighteen months since Vincent escaped death, and now he is fully rehabilitated, at least physically.
I remember when the news came.
I was working, part of a team in A&E, trying to save the life of a little girl whoâd walked out in front of a car, while her mother had stood by screaming as her daughter had been flung into the air. She had head injuries, massive internal injuries â the broken bones were almost incidental â and we were working, just like we always did, to reverse death, to defeat it and send it away again. We knew what we were doing, the trauma team. We were gladiators, experts: fearless, brave, perhaps a little bit cocky; each of us was certain that if we played our part, followed the rules, we had a very good chance of sending Death away empty-handed. And that day, the day that I heard the news about the love of my life, we knew we were on the road to saving that little girl. It would be hard, but we could do it.
And then I was called away, and they told me Vincent had been badly injured, that he was being airlifted first to Camp Bastion to be stabilised, and then to Birmingham. And the first thing I thought was that I couldnât go back to working on the little girl. I couldnât because, if there was only one life that was allowed to be retrieved that day, I didnât want it to be hers.
It was a dark thought, a terrible, irrational, selfish thought, but I had it. And sometimes now I have to think about it; I make myself think about it â about the strange cosmic choices that we think we have, the vows we will make, the prayers we will send out to a god in which we donât even believe. Take her, not him. Please, God, donât take him.
They sent me home, of course. Another nurse stepped in and took over my role, and the little girl was saved. I remember it seemed like years for the call to come through that Vincent was stable enough to be brought back to the UK, that the doctors felt that he was going to make it. I got in my purple car and drove up to Birmingham right away. I wanted to be at his side the moment he arrived.
Things were touch and go for a while, but at the hospital everything was taken care of with military precision, even though it wasnât a military hospital. The nurses took me under their wing, looking after me especially well as I was one of their own. They told me they ran the wards with the servicemen on as if they were in the army. Having people in uniform, having a routine, comrades in arms, it all helped the men and women they treated get better. When Vincent had healed enough, he was transferred to Headley Court to be fitted with a prosthetic leg and to learn how to walk again. I didnât see him so much then, in those four months; he didnât want me to come. He said he didnât want to see me again until he could be standing on his own two feet.
I fought him on that, of course. Even if he didnât want to see me, I wanted to see him. To know what he was going through, to know that I could be near him, to see him, touch him, while he went through what was almost unbearable. But he was insistent, cool to my pleadings. I thought it was his way of coping, of maintaining dignity. I thought, whatâs a few months out of a lifetime if it makes him feel better? We talked every day. We emailed, we skyped, and it was like we let ourselves believe that nothing had changed, that everything was the same, because, after all, ours was a romance that had always been lived down the wire.
And then on the day I went to pick him up, he greeted me at the top of the steps, standing tall, and I ran into his arms. And as I ran I thought, this is it, the proper beginning of our real life together as man and wife.
And from the outside, everything looks if not good then OK. Itâs eighteen months since a rocket launch attack killed one and injured three in his unit. Eighteen months since Vincent escaped death, and now he is fully rehabilitated, at least physically.
I remember when the news came.
I was working, part of a team in A&E, trying to save the life of a little girl whoâd walked out in front of a car, while her mother had stood by screaming as her daughter had been flung into the air. She had head injuries, massive internal injuries â the broken bones were almost incidental â and we were working, just like we always did, to reverse death, to defeat it and send it away again. We knew what we were doing, the trauma team. We were gladiators, experts: fearless, brave, perhaps a little bit cocky; each of us was certain that if we played our part, followed the rules, we had a very good chance of sending Death away empty-handed. And that day, the day that I heard the news about the love of my life, we knew we were on the road to saving that little girl. It would be hard, but we could do it.
And then I was called away, and they told me Vincent had been badly injured, that he was being airlifted first to Camp Bastion to be stabilised, and then to Birmingham. And the first thing I thought was that I couldnât go back to working on the little girl. I couldnât because, if there was only one life that was allowed to be retrieved that day, I didnât want it to be hers.
It was a dark thought, a terrible, irrational, selfish thought, but I had it. And sometimes now I have to think about it; I make myself think about it â about the strange cosmic choices that we think we have, the vows we will make, the prayers we will send out to a god in which we donât even believe. Take her, not him. Please, God, donât take him.
They sent me home, of course. Another nurse stepped in and took over my role, and the little girl was saved. I remember it seemed like years for the call to come through that Vincent was stable enough to be brought back to the UK, that the doctors felt that he was going to make it. I got in my purple car and drove up to Birmingham right away. I wanted to be at his side the moment he arrived.
Things were touch and go for a while, but at the hospital everything was taken care of with military precision, even though it wasnât a military hospital. The nurses took me under their wing, looking after me especially well as I was one of their own. They told me they ran the wards with the servicemen on as if they were in the army. Having people in uniform, having a routine, comrades in arms, it all helped the men and women they treated get better. When Vincent had healed enough, he was transferred to Headley Court to be fitted with a prosthetic leg and to learn how to walk again. I didnât see him so much then, in those four months; he didnât want me to come. He said he didnât want to see me again until he could be standing on his own two feet.
I fought him on that, of course. Even if he didnât want to see me, I wanted to see him. To know what he was going through, to know that I could be near him, to see him, touch him, while he went through what was almost unbearable. But he was insistent, cool to my pleadings. I thought it was his way of coping, of maintaining dignity. I thought, whatâs a few months out of a lifetime if it makes him feel better? We talked every day. We emailed, we skyped, and it was like we let ourselves believe that nothing had changed, that everything was the same, because, after all, ours was a romance that had always been lived down the wire.
And then on the day I went to pick him up, he greeted me at the top of the steps, standing tall, and I ran into his arms. And as I ran I thought, this is it, the proper beginning of our real life together as man and wife.
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