Chapter 14 - Grant Finally Learned What Happened After the Radio Went Silent
Months later, Grant and I sat in the clinic garden.
He had started volunteering with a peer-support program once a week.
No title.
No publicity.
He asked me something he had apparently carried for years.
“What happened after our helicopter lifted?”
I remembered immediately.
“We moved another team.”
“That fast?”
“We still had casualties somewhere else.”
Grant looked down.
“I spent nine years imagining Keystone as some impossible person.”
I smiled faintly.
“I had cold coffee on my uniform and hadn’t slept in twenty-two hours.”
He laughed.
Then grew serious.
“You saved us.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“The people on the ground moved you. The aircraft crew came in. Medics kept you alive. I coordinated.”
“You stayed.”
“Yes.”
That was the part I allowed myself to own.
I stayed.
Grant touched the edge of his old service bracelet.
Then said:
“Vanessa knew how much that voice meant to me.”
“I know.”
“And still lied.”
“Yes.”
He looked toward the clinic.
“I’m sorry.”
This time I understood what he meant.
Not sorry for Vanessa.
Sorry that he had accepted a story about me without ever asking me who I was.
I nodded.
May you like
That was enough.
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