“This wasn’t one of my better ideas.”
Nikita’s laugh over the phone drove Jodie even deeper under the covers.
“Fine for you. You’re still on the inside, Nikita.” And Jodie so wasn’t. She considered switching her phone to her other ear so that she couldn’t hear Nikita’s laugh. Holding her phone in her left hand still felt wrong—but the blast that had taken both her and her dog out of action with the SEAL teams had left her right ear completely deaf.
“What made you think that moving back in with your parents made any kind of sense?”
“I like my parents.”
“And you don’t think that makes you weird?”
“Not being helpful, Nikita.” Jodie pulled the covers over her face so that she couldn’t see her room. She’d left home at eighteen to go into the Navy. She was back at thirty when twelve years of service was cut off as suddenly as a New York taxi cutting through a crosswalk. Her parents had left her room unchanged over the years so that she’d have somewhere to go when she was on leave.
Everything was familiar, known, safe. Eerily so after a decade in the war zones. Like some part of time had been frozen in this room. The posters on the walls still reflected every band she’d seen at Madison Square Garden as a teen. The shelf above her small desk held every dog book she’d found at used bookstores over the years, starting with Go, Dog. Go! and going to Cesar Millan’s Be the Pack Leader that she’d bought new but never read because she’d joined the Navy a week later. The bed had the blanket that she’d gotten when she was twelve and Nanny had helped her redecorate from a small girl’s room to a “grown-up” teen’s. They’d gone a little mad at Macy’s and she had a carpet the color of a tropical sea, a sunset bedspread, and walls painted in the palest blue of a beachy summer sky.
And here Nikita was, telling her that rather than being embraced by the room she was being entombed here—as if that was helpful information.
What better way to ease back into civilian life than sitting at the breakfast table as Mom and Dad prepared for their morning ride into the city? Mom would take the A or C train from Brooklyn to the New York Downtown Hospital where she’d been a nurse since college. Rather than taking the more convenient F train, Dad would ride with her, then stay on up into Midtown. He’d stroll along 42nd, buying a second cup of coffee before reaching his job as a librarian for NY Public Library. For all Jodie knew, that had been their invariable routine since the day they were married and first moved back into Pop Julius’ brownstone.
About the time she went to high school, Pop Julius and Nanny had retired to Florida. Mom and Dad hadn’t even moved into the big bedroom on the main floor, saving it as the guest bedroom. She, Mom, and Dad still lived on the second floor. The only thing that had changed was that her little brother, instead of living alone on the third floor, now had his wife and two kids up there with him.
“So, what’s the problem, Jodie? You know reentry sucks. Everyone says so. Especially for long-timers like us.”
Everyone says so. The insider’s statement wasn’t helping.
Being back in her childhood home might sound weird, but it didn’t suck. She’d lost thirty pounds the day she got mustered out—twenty of body armor; five of sidearm, extra ammo, and other survival crap; and the last five to unhunching her shoulders wondering if she’d die today. That last part felt pretty good. Though she still carried a combat knife in her small knapsack, she didn’t feel the need for a concealed sidearm. Brooklyn wasn’t a bit like Libya or Syria or…
“The problem…” Jodie hated it, because there was no way to fix it here. “The problem is Brandy.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
What wasn’t wrong with her was the real question. Jodie could feel the heat against her leg of the pure black Belgian Malinois lying on top of the covers. Brandy was all nerves wrapped up in a bit of dog. Every sound made her twitch. The throaty diesel of a metro bus two blocks over on Smith Street sent a ripple along Brandy’s haunches where they pressed against Jodie’s calf. A horn honking at the corner of President and Smith was a flinch of shoulders against her thigh. A siren down their quiet residential street—Shit! The first one of those had given her war dog a full-blown panic attack.
During their years overseas together, Jodie had heard her dog make any number of sounds. A whimper could be anything from thirst to worry to knowing it would get her some extra attention. There’d been cries of pain—as Jodie pulled glass shards from the dog’s footpads or held her while a medic stitched up a bad laceration from tangling with a feral dog and a length of razor wire. Sharp barks of warning, or excitement during play.
Not until Jodie had brought her to New York had Brandy ever made a cry of pure terror. It was the eeriest sound. High pitched. Like an incoming mortar round whistling down on your head that kept building until it was a pure howl. The sound made sense. It was a mortar that had almost taken both their lives, which made the accuracy of Brandy’s imitation creepy as hell. Jodie had finally pinned the frantic dog to the carpet, lying on top of her until Brandy had finally calmed.
That she’d woken the entire family, who’d all tried to storm into her bedroom to see what was happening, hadn’t helped matters. Brandy, who’d always loved hanging out with her SEAL squad and all the attention it got her, could no longer deal with any kind of crowd.
Jodie wanted to go get a bagel with cream cheese and lox at Shelsky’s. She wanted to bop over to Carroll Park, buy a Nutty Buddy ice cream cone from the cart vendor, and sit on a bench in the May sunshine watching the kids play on the swings. She wanted to take her dog for a run down the length of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Hell, she’d even thought about going back to synagogue to see if there were any answers for the devastation and cruelty she’d witnessed overseas.
Instead, they’d spent her first week home cowering in her ten-by-ten bedroom that would soon be stuffy with June’s heat. It was already getting that way because of the need to keep the window closed to muffle any street noise. Even her two nieces didn’t dare come into the room anymore after Brandy had snapped at them. Twice a day, Jodie forced Brandy outside; but she had to put on a full harness and muzzle, only daring to lead her out when kids were at school or so late at night that no one else was out walking their dog.
Nikita listened with sympathy. As one of the few other women to work with the SEALs, there was some understanding. Even though Nikita had gone all SEAL Team 6 while Jodie stayed with the Navy teams, they’d somehow stayed connected. Loosely, but connected. Out of desperation—this evening had been another bad one for Brandy and she was shaking now in her sleep—Jodie had called her. The two women were SEALs, about all that they had in common.
But PTSD happened to other people, not to people still on the inside, still serving. It was like an infectious disease, rarely discussed, “instant isolation ward” treatment from both active and veteran personnel as if it was a highly contagious plague—worse than being a dweeb.
It wasn’t herself. Jodie felt fine. She really enjoyed just being home—the few times she dared leave Brandy alone and venture downstairs to be with the rest of the family. Davy Golding had even come by to pay a visit. They’d been hot and heavy for all of senior year of high school. He’d married and divorced, “Standard practice for us lawyers,” he’d joked with a good laugh. He’d also matured a lot and she wouldn’t have minded checking out the possibilities. But there were only so many times she could invite him to her bedroom—that probably smelled a bit too much of dog—to sit in the creaky desk chair and watch her hold Brandy, who cowered at his presence.
Brandy had always been the fun dog: quick to find explosives, glad to pal around with rest of the squad, tolerant of other war dogs, and a total goofball for a Frisbee or her KONG toy. They’d FAST-roped out of Black Hawk helos together, parachuted out of C-130s at thirty thousand feet while both on oxygen, and patrolled through more hellhole towns than she could count.
Not so much fun after the explosion that had given Brandy half of her scars in a split second and had taken out Jodie’s right eardrum just for the hell of it.
“You know,” Nikita’s voice slowed, “Luke mentioned this place once. Somewhere out west. Hang on.”
Jodie listened as her friend moved about. She could hear her, leaving the apartment she shared with her SEAL husband Drake, wandering down the barracks hall, and thumping on someone’s door. Some whispered conversation of which Jodie could only catch a few words: dog, out west, and that ultimate curse, PTSD.
“This is Commander Luke Altman. Who am I talking to?” His voice was deep and solid as a subway tunnel.
“This is Petty Officer First Class Jodie Jaffe, formerly with SEAL Team—” and her voice choked off.
Luke Altman? Like Mr. Legend SEAL Team 6 Altman? What the hell had Nikita just done to her?
