Paint Me Claimed - Book 2

14 | She's the one

Leonardo

Being Amara's substitute wasn't hard. The people I was made to babysit made me realise it.

Having fought in different wars, even different eras yet those veterans felt familiar to me. Perhaps undergoing the same trauma would make you become part of a similar-experience club.

The scars on the body - the sight of an amputated arm or a leg, a reconstructed face - could be seen to understand what we underwent.

How to explain what our minds underwent?

When I was airlifted from the field, I lost my conscience. So there was no recollection of what happened when they took me in or the way they might have reacted after seeing my mangled body.

The military doctors had severed my left leg to save my life. When I woke up, what I did recollect was their expression - of defeat.

In this room, where I sat with those veterans, I felt the same.

The drumming of defeat, the buzzing noise that we lost a part of our sanity.

A Private narrated the bloodshed he witnessed in Iran. An older person spoke about how his behavior changed after the war, and how he became angry at those who wanted to help him.

For all of their narrations, all I could do was deliver a nod.

They knew I wasn't listening - lost in my own fallen world.

But they weren't talking for me either. They were narrating their pain to the pale green walls of the room, to the flickering fluorescent lights. 

They were spewing their guts in the form of words, letting themselves know they survived.

Though Amara informed me of what I needed to do in case someone looked like a threat to themselves, thankfully, I didn't require using that information.

By the end of an hour, when talks died and those men grabbed their stuff and left, I sat still.

I wasn't ready to go.

I had a date with Zemira but my feet refused to move. The mountain of insecurities I carried, this room helped shoulder it.

Maybe it was the rendition of those veterans, of what they saw and felt that made me feel at home.

I dug my phone out, dialing Amara.

"What happened?" Within a ring, she picked up the call. "Is everything alright?"

It was the same voice she used whenever her son, Faizal, made calls to her at night. A voice of concern.

I had a mother who worried about me like crazy and then her, a crazy friend who always assumed something worst had happened to me.

"Leo, goddammit, tell me what happened?"

"Nothing," I chuckled. "Nothing happened. I'm done with the session and wanted to inform you that. How's Faizy?"

In a moment of silence, changed by Faizy's annoyed voice calling out 'mom' that emerged from the speaker, I understood she must have ruffled his hair.

She always liked ruffling his hair and annoying him. In many ways, she was a replica of my mother.

"Say hello to him for me," I began. Soft breaths greeted me from her end. "I wanted to ask if there's a position open for the role. As a counselor"

I wanted to be a part of something. I wanted to be with my kind of people. Broken, battered yet surviving.

"There is. But there are some courses before that. You can't directly join without the required qualifications."