Kaboom, page 13
He had four boys line up on the track, with a knee at the starting line to use their lower leg as a measurement, then had them position the front starting block next to the base of their foot. “Put the second block one foot back from the front one,” he instructed. “You may adjust this positioning later as it suits you, but this will give you a good starting point.” The four boys set their feet in the blocks after positioning them according to Clay’s instructions.
“Now, for the mark position, put the knee of your rear leg on the ground with your hands touching the track at shoulder width, and your weight on your fingertips. Shift forward just a bit, with your head down. Keep your body in a straight line, and relax! Don’t twist, don’t bob your head. You’re not at a rock concert. Try not to tighten up. It will only slow you down.”
Across the track, Coach Swanson, the real coach, working with the varsity runners, fired a starting gun.
Bang! The simple small pop magnified in Clay’s brain into the dangerous crack of a terrorist’s sniper rifle.
“Take cover!” he shrieked, throwing himself from the chair and reaching for the nearest kid in the line of fire.
But there was no gunfire, no eye-stinging dust or smell of gunpowder, nothing blowing up or exploding. There was only himself, lying on the grass next to the stupid classroom chair, with a dozen teenagers standing around him looking as if an alien had just dropped out of the sky.
“Coach, you OK?” a voice asked with concern.
“Coach, do you need help? Maybe we should get Coach Swanson.”
“Maybe we should call 911. I think he had a stroke.”
Hands were touching him, pulling him upright. He couldn’t get enough air.
“Don’t touch me!”
He didn’t realize how severely he’d barked the command until he observed the expressions of hurt and confusion on the kids who were just trying to help him.
“Don’t call Coach. Don’t call 911. I’m fine.”
No, he wasn’t fine. Who was he kidding? I have to get out of here.
“I’m OK,” he muttered. He was a liar. He was far from OK. “I just need some water.”
A water bottle was pressed into his hand as he pulled himself into a sitting position. God, had his prosthesis come detached, or had his sweatpants hiked up to reveal it? Dizziness swept over him and for a moment he felt like he might pass out. He wanted to hide in the smallest, darkest corner he could find.
“What happened, Coach?” He wasn’t sure which kids were speaking because he was too embarrassed to look higher than their shoes. Those poor deluded kids, thinking he was a coach.
“You don’t look so good.” One of the boys was edging away. Maybe he thought Clay had something contagious. Maybe he was going to run and fetch Coach Swanson, the real coach. Because a lunatic like Clay had no business trying to guide a group of fifteen-year-olds.
Unfortunately, Coach Swanson noticed him on the ground with his runners standing around rather than running, and came trotting over, the starting gun still in his hand.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Dunno, Coach. When you shot off the starter, Coach fell on the ground and yelled out. I think he thought someone was shooting a real gun.”
“Aw, shit.” The kids all looked shocked at Coach uttering an expletive in their presence. “I didn’t think of that.” He tossed the starting pistol on the grass. “Leave it there!” he snapped when one of the kids moved as if to pick it up.
Coach knelt down next to him. “Clay, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that might bother you.”
I have to get out of here.
“What’s wrong with him?” one of the kids asked.
Everything.
“He’s having a PTSD episode,” Coach Swanson said.
He might as well have said Clay was spewing out the Ebola virus, the way the kids looked at him in horror and started backing away.
Five minutes ago these kids had been calling him Coach, with admiration in their eyes and respect in their voices. Now they looked as if they were afraid of him, at the realization of what a fraud their alleged fake imposter of a so-called Coach he really was. To them, people with PTSD were crazy and should be locked up with the rest of the loonies. They shouldn’t be allowed to be around impressionable teenagers. What if some of them were considering a career in the military? He’d scare them away from it completely, between his blown-off leg and his insanity. The recruiters would hate him.
His pulse was thundering. If he was a racehorse, they’d probably consider putting him down. Coach Swanson looked up at the boys.
“Practice is over for today. Go home.”
They stood around, glancing at Coach in confusion, while Clay sat there panting like a mentally challenged dog. He tried to open the bottle of water one of the kids had given him but his hands were too sweaty to twist the cap.
“Go on. Go tell the other guys too.” He waved a hand over to where the varsity runners were waiting. “Tell them we’re done for today.”
“But Coach,” a couple of voices protested. “We just started.”
“Go on. We’ll start again tomorrow.” With reluctance and confusion filling their faces, the boys started edging away, pulling phones out of their gym bags to call for rides.
I have to get out of here.
Though Clay had no direct memory of the Humvee exploding around him and his squad, the terror and blinding pain of it still inserted itself into his brain, threatening to rob him of his rationality. He closed his eyes, squeezing them tight against the shape of darkness engulfing him.
“I’ll help you get to your car,” Coach Swanson said. “I’m really sorry, Clay, I didn’t realize the sound of the starter pistol would be an issue, I should have thought of that ahead of time.”
He had no car. He couldn’t drive. He wasn’t part of this team, and it was a fantasy for him to think so. Running was freedom. Amputation was slavery.
“I didn’t drive here,” he admitted, opening his eyes, but keeping his gaze on the ground so he wouldn’t have to see the looks of pity and disgust on the faces of the track team kids.
“Oh, then in that case, I’ll give you a ride home. We’ll try this again tomorrow.”
Tomorrow? No, he could never come back here and face them.
“No, Coach, you don’t have to,” he protested. Having Coach Swanson drive him home was worse than having his mother drive him. He’d be returning the defective merchandise, the neurotic basket case who fell to pieces at the sound of a simple starter pistol. Maybe after everybody was gone he’d get another Uber.
His left leg burned with pain from thigh to toe and damn that was so unfair, that he still had to endure pain in a limb he didn’t have. Phantom pain, the doctors had called it. It freaked him out every time it happened. The pain was unpredictable and changeable, sometimes burning, sometimes stabbing, sometimes twisting. They’d told him it was psychosomatic, which meant it was in his messed-up brain, because of course titanium didn’t feel pain. What the doctors couldn’t tell him was how long the phantom pain was going to last.
He wished everyone would just go away and leave him to his misery. But Coach Swanson insisted on helping him get up so he could sit back in the chair, the one with the folder bearing the words “Coach Maslowski” taped to the back. The kids were obeying the instructions to go home, gathering up their things and moving off towards the school driveway.
A feminine voice pierced his foggy brain. “Hi there, Mr. Swanson. Hi, Clay. Is everything OK?”
That voice. It was Julie. She was standing there a few feet away, looking too sexy for words in denim shorts and a cute yellow shirt. Some of the varsity runners were giving her the eye. If he’d been able-bodied Clay would have dashed over and told those creeps to put their eyeballs back in their heads.
Coach was shaking her hand. “Hello there, Julie. If you came to watch practice, I’m afraid we’re quitting early today.”
So Coach Swanson remembered Julie. Not surprising. She had attended every one of his track meets their senior year, both at home and away. Even in the rain. Even driving the fifteen miles all the way down to Schaumburg.
“I came to see Clay,” she said.
Clay couldn’t look at her. What was she doing here? Hadn’t he told her there was no hope for them anymore?
Her hand was on his shoulder. “Are you OK?” she asked. He closed his eyes for a moment, both loving and hating the feel of her touch, but glanced up just enough to see Coach Swanson step away and give her a, we need to talk, glance and the two of them turned away from him, though he could see Coach Swanson glance back at him as he spoke to Julie in a voice too low for Clay to hear. He did, after all, have a slight hearing loss.
Great. They were talking about him. Coach was most likely telling Julie what an insane idiot her boyfriend was.
No, not boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. He’d taken care of that relationship months ago, shortly after Kaboom. The two of them – Coach Swanson and Julie - came back to where he was sitting, still trying to uncap that stupid bottle of water, and Coach said, “I’ll leave you in Julie’s capable hands. Can we try this again tomorrow? I promise we’ll only use a whistle, not starter guns.”
Clay started to say, wanted to say, no I can’t, but Julie spoke up on his behalf before he could get the words out. “Sure, Mr. Swanson.” And the coach, damn him, just nodded agreeably, said, “Thanks, see you tomorrow,” and scooped up the starter pistol off the ground before loping off across the football field. Most of the kids had left already while Clay had been there having his panic attack.
He was left there with Julie, who he wanted, needed more than anyone or anything ever in his life, but who he wished would go away too.
No, he didn’t want that, even though it would still be for the best. But rather than leaving him there she knelt in front of him and took his hands.
“Cowboy? Are you alright?”
He wished he could lie to her and tell her that yes, he was all right, but he couldn’t. He shook his head.
“Hearing the starter gun upset you,” she said. It wasn’t a question. Obviously Coach had told her about his flashback attack. “Did it remind you of things that happened in Afghanistan? Shooting?”
He still couldn’t talk, just nodded, and gave up trying to open the water bottle. He dropped it on the ground, no he threw it, fully expecting the thing to split open and spill out. But it didn’t, and Julie calmly picked it up, pulled up the edge of her shirt to wipe the cap, opened it and handed it to him. He hadn’t been able to open it; his hands had been too shaky. But he gulped half the water down, because his throat had gone dry at the tiny glimpse of Julie’s stomach that he’d seen when she used her shirt to wipe the bottle cap.
He remembered her fair skin, when they’d been in bed together, pale and beautiful next to his tan flesh, back before Kaboom. It had been almost a year ago but he hadn’t forgotten kissing that very spot. His memories could feel his fingers and lips caressing, as they undressed and explored each other. He shouldn’t be recalling that time of bliss. It only hurt him because he knew it was over, but how do you instruct your brain not to remember the best thing that ever happened to you?
“Come on,” she encouraged. “My car is parked just over here.” She stood up but her hands were still holding his, and he let himself curl his fingers around hers, wishing they could stay like that forever.
“What are you doing here?” he muttered, keeping his butt on the chair. He wasn’t ready to try to stand up yet.
“I went to your house to see you, and your mother told me you were here helping your old track coach.”
“That was a stupid thing for me to do,” he muttered.
“Mr. Swanson felt really bad about the starter pistol,” she said. “That’s why he sent everyone home. He was embarrassed that he’d been so insensitive.”
Embarrassed? Coach had been embarrassed? How could he have been? He wasn’t the one diving for cover on a running track because he’d thought they were being attacked, when there was in reality no threat at all.
PTSD episode, Coach had said. It was the first time the term had been applied to him since he’d left the hospital. It was like anxiety on fire. It sucked. It blew. He wondered if that fancy new phone his parents had bought him had access to an online thesaurus so he could look up more synonyms for sucked the big hairy meatball.
“You and Coach were talking about me behind my back.” His accusation was the whine of a spoiled brat, and he hated himself for it.
“Well then, talk to me to my face.” How was it possible for a person to want something, and to not want that same thing, with equal ferocity? He couldn’t look her in the eyes. Look what had happened last time he did that. He’d ended up bawling like a baby. She had a way of looking at him as if he was the only significant person in sight, and she still did so now.
Julie sighed. “I told Mr. Swanson I’d see that you come back tomorrow.”
“I’m not coming back here. I can’t,” he said. “And it’s Coach, not Mr. Swanson.”
“Actually he told me I could call him Brent.”
The surprise of that momentarily pulled him a bit out of his post-panic fog. “Coach said you could call him by his first name?”
Clay would never, ever in a million years, even consider addressing Coach Swanson as anything other than Coach, even if he was an adult now. Allegedly an adult, that is. Since the moment of Kaboom, his adulthood had hung by a thin, fragile thread.
Julie let go of his hands and picked up his cane where it lay on the ground next to his chair. Handing it to him, she said, “Come on, let’s go. I don’t have to be at work until five so I’m all yours until four.”
All his? No, she wasn’t all his. Surely she must remember that email he’d sent her right after Kaboom. But she was holding his arm, helping him to stand up, steadying him as she guided him towards her car parked in the lot, and he let her because he was too weak to resist her. He allowed her to put him into the passenger seat of her car. When she got in the driver’s seat, she turned towards him.
“You were wrong,” she said. “It’s not over between us. I won’t let it be.”
“But, Julie,” he started to protest.
She interrupted him. “I know you said that in your email. But I’m not accepting it. You were traumatized at the time and under the influence of strong painkillers.”
It was true he had been on some pretty massive doses of medications then, but he’d still been lucid enough to know what was right where Julie was concerned, even if the right thing killed him inside.
“So!” she said brightly, as if this were some normal summer day and they were off to amuse themselves. “What do you want to do?”
It wasn’t a matter of what he wanted to do, but what he needed to do.
“I need to go home.”
Julie shook her head as she pulled out of the parking lot and onto Elmhurst Road. “It’s only nine-thirty. We have almost all day. Have you had breakfast? Let’s go get -”
He cut her off. “No! I need to go home!”
This whole getting out, doing normal stuff, acting like he had a reason for being, had been a huge mistake and he needed to get back to the safety of his lonely bedroom and take a pain pill. It only hurt him to see Julie pretending that they were still a couple.
She looked hurt. “Don’t you want to spend time with me, Clay?”
Of course, he wanted to spend time with her. He wanted to spend forever with her. But it didn’t matter what he wanted now. Better for her to think of him as a rude jerk, like his sister did, than to have to experience the pity and disgust that she would surely feel if she spent much time around him. Better not to know how she’d be dragged down by obligation if he selfishly hung around her. He’d be like a rock on a chain around her neck, a big heavy rock, dragging her down to drown in his nothingness.
He looked out the window so he wouldn’t have to see the same expressions of hurt and confusion he’d seen the day she’d found him in his back yard. He couldn’t lie and say no, he didn’t want to spend time with her, but he couldn’t tell her the truth either. His silence hung between them like an invisible but solid barricade.
After a moment he heard her sigh. “If that’s really what you want, I’ll take you home. Your mother told me to not push it and to give you time.”
Great. Not only was she discussing him with Coach, but with his mother too. And with that sergeant she’d contacted. This wasn’t how a non-existent relationship was supposed to be.
Mercifully she had him in his parent’s driveway in a few minutes, but put her hand on his arm, capturing him before he could get out of the car.
“What time should I pick you up in the morning to go back to the school?”
She had to be kidding. “I’m not going back there, ever. Don’t pick me up.”
“Why not? Brent said he wouldn’t use the starter pistol if it bothered you.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t face them again.”
“I don’t see why not. Having PTSD is nothing to be ashamed of. If you want, I’ll stay there with you.”
He couldn’t let her do that, as much as he would like to. She worked long, late hours at the restaurant, and the last thing she needed was to get up early after a grueling shift to babysit for him. Besides, he didn’t like the way some of those senior boys looked at her. Not that he had any right to be jealous.
“No, I said I’m not going back. I’ll send Coach a text telling him not to expect me.”
Her hand was still on his arm and he looked at her fingers. Just five slender feminine fingers, yet they held him in place more than anything ever could.
“I don’t think I told you how absolutely sorry I am about your leg,” she said. “I know it’s the most horrible thing that could possibly happen to a person. But I’m not giving up on you, Cowboy. Don’t think you can get rid of me that easily. I want to help you get through this so we can be together again. Did you meet with that guy from the Wounded Warrior Project?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
“Good. I hope you keep meeting with him. He seemed really nice when I talked to him, and I think he’ll be a big help for you. I want to help you too if you’ll let me.”
