Until Then

Chapter 25

CHAPTER 25

Kenneth

I still can't feel her clearly beneath my palm. I can sense the warmth, and the smooth surface of her foot, but it isn't the same as how things felt when I was alive. Part of me never wants to be able to fully feel her because I know that means she is more in my world than in hers. She might not want to extend her life, but I still feel devastated for the children who will miss out on having her as their last nurse.

Her arms are wrapped around herself and she has the side of her face tucked in comfily where the pillow meets the back of the couch. I can almost imagine already doing this some other time. It's a weird sense of familiarity and the more time we are together, the more real it starts to feel.

I get an image of an older woman, sleeping peacefully in a recliner, her arms around a small sleeping baby. It's almost as if I can see from the eyes of a child at her feet. I lose my grip on the image and it's gone quickly, not really giving me a chance to try and figure out where I might have seen something like that. My own mother had a baby after me, but I would have been able to see her long blonde hair and pale skin. In the strange memory the woman had darker skin and jet-black hair.

Still, I can't shake this feeling that I know Quinn already. I knew she was going to tell me she wasn't going to choose an aggressive treatment, before she had even had time to answer my question. As soon as the words had left my mouth I had the thought, No, no more trauma. She won't want that again.

I watch her for a minute, trying hard to pull up anything else, but it's all gone. There is nothing but this beautiful girl sleeping next to me. Her feet feel small in my hands, and it reminds me of how I used to tickle my sister Juliet's feet. I've been thinking about her since the day my father told me she and my mother already got the news. I wonder if she kept her promise to get my tags to my dad's grave, and if my plan to have my friend and fellow marine Liam, be the one to drive her worked out.

I would have never let Liam date her while I was alive. Sure, I had my suspicions he would fall in love with her the moment he met her, and she'd be interested in him too, but it wasn't the right time. We were going to deploy and I would never introduce someone to her that was just going to be gone again in a few months. After losing my dad, she wouldn't be open to the idea of dating a marine anyway.

I hope she broke up with the boy who had been weighing her down since day one. I'd tried hard to make her see she was worth more than he was willing to give, but talking to a teenage girl and hoping to get inside her brain in some rational place was not always the best plan. They love fiercely and intensely, sometimes unable to see what's right in front of them through all the love they have to give. Her boyfriend is a lying, cheating asshole. I just couldn't be the one to tell her. She had to find out for herself.

As I sat in the dark with Quinn, it started to hit me that maybe my plan didn't work out. Mateo hadn't said anything about Liam or Juliet, and even after sitting in the hospital room with Lucas and Bailey, I still hadn't heard how Liam was doing. I know it's not my job to fix everything, but having it be unsettled isn't sitting well. Now that the fear of losing Mateo had been dealt with, the fear of having another lost friend started to rise.

No one makes it out of war without experiencing a death. Maybe they don't lose their life, but something dies—the enemy in front of you, the Marine by your side, or a little part of your innocence and soul as you try to make peace within the pandemonium. We're taught to kill, yet we've been raised to believe it's a sin. We're fighting to stop genocide, yet our own "brothers" are murdered in droves on the way into the battle. We're giving our lives so that the self righteous, entitled youth at home can burn the flags that will drape our caskets. So no, maybe we don't all die. But we will all mourn forever the concept we had of the way life should be before we'd seen war. That delicate image that is shattered the first time you hear the thud of a bullet into flesh, or see the corpse of a child who'd been used as a weapon from the dirty window of your Humvee.

For me, I'd take the quick death that I know over the slow one that would haunt me.