If I Don't Ask, page 7
surgeons, despite obviously being best friends off the field,
acted like mortal enemies when they were on it. And they
were on the same team. I dreaded to think what they would be
like if they were on opposing teams. At every mistake or
missed opportunity, the pair of them bickered at one another
like siblings. Worse than. They cheered and pep-talked the
other members of our side, but it was like they only had
dagger eyes for each other. Shit-talking during football games
was natural. But only ever directed to the other team. This was
just bizarre.
After Sabine missed a wide throw from Mitch, he stalked
over to her. “Christ, Sabine. Do you even know how to catch a
football?”
She raised her chin, staring him down—no mean feat
considering he was six inches taller. “I do. Do you know how
to throw one? Because from where I was, the ball wasn’t
coming anywhere near me.”
“Because you weren’t where I told you to be.”
“If I went where you told me to, Mr. Self-appointed
Captain of the Team, I’d have been flagged in two seconds.”
She extended her arms and spun a full three-sixty degrees.
“Read the play, Mitch!”
“I’ll give you something to read,” he muttered.
I set my hands on my hips, trying my damnedest not to
reveal how amusing I found the whole thing. “Are you two
about done? Can we play some football now, or has our
weekly fun game somehow turned into a bickering
competition?”
They both whipped around to face me. Sabine looked
utterly mortified. “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.” Her
mortification melted into a smile lifting the edges of her
mouth. “Out of curiosity, between Mitch and me, who do you
think would win this hypothetical bickering competition?”
“At this stage, it’s a dead tie,” I said dryly.
Her barely there smile turned delighted. “I’ll take it.”
I nodded and moved back to my position on the line, at the
other end from her. For now, everyone seemed to be on the
amused side of the scale as they watched the newest people on
the base go at each other like they were professional anti-
cheerleaders. But it could easily tip from amusing the team to
affecting morale. If the team didn’t get a chance to enjoy
themselves, forget about all the shit going on around us and
blow off steam, then all that steam built until the pressure
exploded. Part of my job was ensuring things like that didn’t
happen.
I tried to keep my eyes on the plays and players around me,
but that inevitably meant I had to look at Sabine. And almost
every time I looked to her, I’d catch her watching me. I
decided it was because she’d probably never had a CO interact
with her during rec time. But she seemed to be suffering a
particularly intense bout of consternation about it.
When we huddled to discuss our next play, Sabine leaned
over to peer at Mitch. She pulled her buff higher so it covered
her mouth and nose but I still heard her clearly, and if his
expression was anything to go by, so did Mitch when she
drawled, “Are you throwing the ball to me, or the opposition
this time?”
Mitch’s look was withering. “Know what? I think I might
make this next play a pass to Colonel Keane here. Give myself
a minute of respite from your bellyachin’.” He turned a
winning smile on me. “Assuming that’s okay with you,
ma’am?”
“Fine with me,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
Mitch’s pass was a good one, and I zigzagged my way
forward ten yards before I ran into a wall of Red Team and
was flagged. I threw the ball to Amy who sent it onward. The
ball made its way through most of the hands on our team until
it reached Sabine who tossed it back to Mitch. “Nice catch,”
she said when he snatched it from the air in one hand. “Better
than your passes.”
His smile was saccharine sweet. “Thanks. What was it that
general attending said our first day?” Mitch pretended to mull
it over. “Hmm, that’s right. He said mine were the best set
o’hands he’d seen in a good long while. Best set o’hands,” he
repeated, digging it in.
I spoke instead of Sabine. “That’s a fine compliment,
Mitch. Maybe you can use that best set of hands you’ve got
there to throw the ball and help us win the game?” I’d
intended to sound encouraging but with all the shit-talking
flying around, it came out as slightly condescending.
Mitch chuckled and nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
And Sabine… Her mouth fell open. She coughed out a
laugh before she turned away and crouched down to fiddle
with her boot laces. Her shoulders shook with silent laughter,
the sounds of her guffaws muffled behind her gloves.
“Nice to see you find it all so funny, Sabs,” Mitch drawled.
She straightened up. “Oh no, Mitch. Just remembering
something I read on the Internet this morning.”
“The Internet was down this morning. Again.”
“Maybe I read it yesterday morning then,” she said airily as
she jogged over to get set for our next play.
“It was down yesterday morning too, Sabine,” I
commented.
Mirth was plain in her eyes. “So it was, ma’am.”
By halftime, despite playing a fierce and scrappy game of
reasonably solid defense and passable offense, my team was
down and looking unlikely to recover unless we found a
miracle. Both Sabine and I had caught passes from Mitch and
managed to gain some yards but we just couldn’t capitalize.
After another wide throw from Mitch, Sabine held her hands
up, twinkling her fingers. “These are my hands, Mitch. Maybe
a better set than yours. This is where you need to throw the
ball, not at my damned feet, which, skilled as they are—cannot
catch.”
“Then put your hands in the spot they’re supposed to be.”
And so it continued until the moment Conway blew the
final whistle, and it was like every ounce of competitiveness
and vitriol was sucked out of them and replaced with teasing
passive-aggression. Sabine punched Mitch’s pectoral and she
did not pull it. Her smile was fake as fake could be as she
slow-clapped him. “Great job. We would have almost won it if
not for your bad calls and shitty throws.”
His smile was equally disdainful. “Thanks, Sabs. Maybe
next time we’ll get ’em. If you can learn what a football play
is, that is.”
“Check your emails,” she shot back. “I’m sending you a
video. Subject, How to Play Football.”
“Check yours. There’ll be a How to be a Cheerleader
video.”
She stepped up to him, eyes narrowing as she got right up
in his face. “Are you saying I should be on the sidelines
instead of on the field?”
“I’m not not saying it.”
“Don’t forget, I’ve seen you in a skirt. You look great,
prime cheerleader material. Probably better than me.”
Big, burly Mitch Boyd in a skirt. That was an interesting
visual. I cut in before he could come back at her again.
“Fleischer, Boyd, a word?”
They looked at each other, both of them wearing a What
have you done now? expression. I moved a few yards away
and they followed. They stood at loose attention before me and
Sabine braved a, “What can we help you with, ma’am? If this
is about what I said about frostbite conditions before the game,
I apologize. Sometimes my brain and mouth don’t connect.
You were absolutely right to make us wear gloves.”
I nodded my acknowledgment but didn’t say anything
further about her second apology. Instead, I asked them both,
“You two are friends, yes?”
This time Mitch got in first. “Yes, ma’am. The best. Ever
since our first day of premed.”
“Hmm. Do you always try to kill one another when you’re
teaming up during friendly sports games? Or is it just
something in the air here that’s making you act like mortal
enemies?”
Sabine’s eyes widened. “Oh. Uh, it’s just that…we’re…
competitive. And he’s so bossy, nobody can do a thing right on
his team. I don’t like being treated like a kid who can’t follow
instructions.” She added a hasty, “Ma’am.”
Mitch’s indignant outrage at being called bossy was
comical, but Sabine wasn’t wrong—he’d been running the
team, overruling everything, from the moment Bobby had first
tossed him the ball. He hastened to defend himself. “I may be
bossy sometimes when I’ve got a football in my hands,
Colonel Keane, but Sabine is stubborn as heck and doesn’t
listen to good sense. Simple as that.”
And Mitch wasn’t wrong either. “I see. Well, henceforth,
the pair of you can either learn to play together or you can be
on separate teams forevermore.” I smiled benevolently. “Your
bickering isn’t good for morale, or my migraines.”
They exchanged a slow look, but were smiling. Mitch
turned that smile on me. “Might be best to keep us separated,
ma’am.”
“Separated it is. From now on, you two can sit out while
we draw whose team we’ll be on.” Being held up as examples
of “how not to bond” might get them to figure it out. If either
of them were bothered by my ruling, they didn’t show it.
Sabine nodded decisively. “Sounds like a good plan.”
I waved everyone else over. “Okay, from now on, Boyd
and Fleischer will be separated for team games. Instead of our
names, we can all draw either Mitch or Sabine from the mayo
bucket and that will decide the teams. Any objections?”
There were no objections, only a great deal of laughter.
From Mitch and Sabine included. At least they were good
sports about the whole thing, which had been a gamble I’d
thankfully won. “Good game, everyone. You’re all dismissed.
Cool down properly, and refuel. I’ll see you all later. Enjoy the
rest of your day.”
Mitch gave Sabine a friendly side-on hug then jogged away
to catch up to Bobby and John. Amy slung her arm around
Sabine’s shoulders and as they walked away she blurted, “That
was fucking magnificent.”
“I’m so mortified,” Sabine groaned.
“Don’t be.” Amy guffawed. “You’ve taught us all new
comebacks for when we’re fighting with our siblings.”
Sabine’s response was muffled, but the laughter wasn’t.
The sound of her mirth made me feel as if I’d just had a dose
of serotonin. Time to go cool myself down too. Maybe a
clichéd cold shower would do the trick. As I stared after
Sabine, I decided it probably wouldn’t help one damned bit.
CHAPTER FIVE
By almost three months after Sabine and Mitch’s arrival at
Atlantis, I had a solid sense of who they were and how they
worked best and their professional weaknesses, which I’d been
helping them strengthen. Gently in Sabine’s case because she
was prone to take anything suggesting she hadn’t succeeded
absolutely as a complete failure. She had a healthy self-
confidence and the expected surgeon’s arrogance, but it was
balanced by her desperate desire to do everything perfectly,
which sometimes made her seem insecure. An interesting and
intriguing combination.
She was an interesting and intriguing combination.
Professionally, she was everything I could have asked for
in a surgeon, and then some. She had undeniable talent, but
also an innate ability to navigate traumas with a team that
made her seem almost telepathic. Sabine was always the first
person after every trauma to get her paperwork to me, and her
notes were not only legible but detailed.
And personally… I tried not to notice, but given the close
proximity on base, and my persistent interest, I couldn’t help
myself. She was incredibly routine-oriented, right down to her
breakfast. She’d wait for fresh batches of powdered milk
which, unlike most who used it for cereal, she put in her coffee
—always two of the small catering-size mugs. Most of us
drank coffee like it was a hot potato, chugging it as quickly as
we could after ignoring any additions, or hastily utilizing the
chemical-tasting creamers and sugar. Not Sabine.
She was out on the dirt running track every day to get in at
least five miles, even if it was interrupted by work or weather
and she had to stagger her miles across a few sessions. She
read every free chance she got, always the same three books: a
historical non-fiction about Ancient Rome, or German
versions of Nietzsche and a falling-apart Kafka. After
Googling the titles I realized those two were Nietzsche’s On
the Genealogy of Morality and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.
I’d rarely seen her less-than-immaculate, as if she spent
half her free time starching her uniforms and spraying her hair
to keep it in place. Her obvious focus on adhering to uniform
standards made my mind wander to places it shouldn’t,
because I couldn’t help wondering what she might look like
out of uniform and not-so-immaculate. My imagination
frequently took an unplanned trip, thinking of Sabine rumpled
in tangled sheets. Hair loose and spread across the pillow.
Tanned skin flushed and slick with sweat. Breasts rising and
falling as she tried to catch her breath after I’d enjoyed myself
between her thighs.
The erotic-tinted thoughts were obviously a dead giveaway
as to my feelings, and the more I noticed about her, the more I
accepted noticing these things was a sure sign I was seriously
attracted to her. Attraction on its own was fine. But this went
beyond simple attraction.
I realized, with some dread, that I liked her, plain and
simple. And like was so dangerous. It would worm its way
under my skin, become part of me, catch me unawares at the
worst time and trip me up. I made a mental note to unpack
these feelings more deeply at some stage. But in the meantime,
I’d let thoughts come freely in case the answer suddenly hit
me in the head. And my free thoughts always circled back to
the same thing.
Loneliness.
It was the most logical explanation. Despite being
surrounded by people, I was lonely. So, was this attachment
just that I was desperate for genuine friendship with someone
who had an appealing personality, and it was warping into me
thinking beyond friendship because she also had appealing
everything else? Or was it that Sabine was someone with
whom I could imagine myself in a relationship, and I was
doing just that in a safe way because I knew she was so
unavailable? And unavailable was safe. There was no danger
in fantasy. Or…was it simply a genuine attraction that didn’t
need any deep or meaningful unpacking because it was what it
was?
But it did need to be unpacked and addressed. It needed to
be figured out and then put away because by its very nature
and my very situation, I needed to know why her, why this,
why now? Because if I didn’t understand it, I wouldn’t be able
to control it. I wouldn’t be able to contain it. And I needed to
contain it. Everything in my life was contained neatly in its
proper place. Work. My sexuality. My, admittedly few,
historical romantic relationships back home. My friendships,
both personal and professional. A Venn diagram where certain
things could never intersect. Like work and romantic
relationships. Especially not a romantic work relationship with
someone under my command. Huge no way, no how, even
without the added same-sex complication of Don’t Ask, Don’t
Tell. Unfortunately, having figured out a little of the why didn’t
tell me what I should do about the how…
I made a quick stop by the wards to check everything was
okay, everyone was stable and comfortable, and the transfers
of recovering casualties to Landstuhl, Germany were on
schedule, then strolled across the base toward the chow hall
for lunch. By all accounts it was a beautiful early-spring day.
Warm without baking. Light wind winding its way around the
buildings. A few wispy clouds streaking across the cerulean
sky. I paused by the machinery shed and raised my face to the
sun, absorbing some Vitamin D and enjoying my few
