Chapter 60: Starting Over

After our brief call, the phone was removed from my room. I guess Colonel Featherstone wasn’t a very trusting sort, or maybe he was just a careful sort. It wasn’t important to me. I had come to terms with what was happening.

I wasn’t going to hide my money anymore, either. I asked him to arrange a nice suite at a nearby hotel, a good one, like a Hilton or a Ritz, not some damn Super-8. He suggested the Hilton in Silver Spring, which was only a few miles away, across the line in Maryland, and less than a ten-minute drive. I agreed to that. He would have somebody from the local JAG office in Fort Bragg call her tomorrow and give her directions or meet with her on Friday before she drove up. Then somebody from the JAG office in DC would meet her and get her to Walter Reed on Saturday.

After that I said thank you and farewell to the colonel. He told me that he’d follow my case, but that he needed to fly to Fort Rucker in Alabama to sort out some other assholes. I got the impression that was his main job, solving problems that nobody wanted to go to trial or to be in public with.

I knew Marilyn. She would be lucky to get the car packed and on the road by noon. The family joke was to always tell her you had to leave half an hour before she really had to leave, that way she would be on time. It was about a six-hour drive from Fayetteville to Washington, unless she got lost and detoured through San Francisco. Hopefully, she would notice the Mississippi River before she crossed it.

That meant she would spend the night at the Hilton and see me in two days. That was fine by my schedule. That had me spending two more nights here, getting prepped for the transfer, and then being flown in an old C-123 Provider to Andrews in Washington, to be transferred to Walter Reed. I probably wouldn’t get there before she did. I just hoped I would have a chance to see her before they started working on me at Walter Reed.

In two days’ time I was deemed healthy enough to travel. Whatever was wrong with my kidneys seemed okay, but they left the drain in my side. I lost a few more of the tubes in me, but they kept a couple of IVs in place, as well as the catheter. It was a wonderful flight. The Provider was even noisier and rougher than a Herc, and my not quite cute and bubbly flight attendant had a five o’clock shadow.

I was greeted at Walter Reed with a full physical. It was apparent that only Walter Reed’s eminent physicians could possibly diagnose me correctly. After all, the Navy ran the hospital at Guantanamo Bay, and it was well known that they still used leeches. (Surprisingly, I heard the same comment from the staff in Gitmo about Army hospitals.) This continued the next morning, until about lunch time, and nobody would tell me if Marilyn or my son were there yet.

They were. I was wheeled in my bed back to my private room around lunchtime. The private room was at Colonel Featherstone’s request, because I had told him that Classified or not, I was going to tell my wife what had happened. I wasn’t going to tell her what I had done with the four prisoners. Marilyn would never understand or accept that.

I had been giving those killings a lot of thought over the last few days. By some standards I had murdered those men, but not by all standards. According to both the Geneva Convention and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, I was prohibited from killing civilians under any circumstances, unless they were attacking me or my troops. Then again, if I had obeyed the Geneva Convention, I was to turn myself and my men over to civilian authorities and be interned or paroled and released. That was ludicrous.

During war time operations, I was justified in some cases in killing people in furtherance of my mission. Again, that didn’t apply. If I had been there legitimately on a drug related mission, I could turn my prisoners over to civilian authority for disposal, again, not a realistic alternative.

Or I could just put a bullet in each brain and decide the world was better off without four narcos in it.

Once, when I was working on my MBA, I had taken a class in Personnel Management and Human Relations, taught by a guy who was a vice-president at ATT and chain smoked in class worse than Featherstone. One day, totally out of the blue, he asked for a show of hands. ‘How many of you believe in capital punishment?’ About half of us, including myself, put our hands up. He nodded and then told us, ‘You’re the people who will be able to fire people.’ He then went on to explain how firing people was very similar to killing them, in terms of self-esteem and the consequences, but that managers had to be able to do it.

I often wondered if that was why I always liked line jobs over staff. My father didn’t believe in capital punishment (strange in a hard-core Republican, at least to me) and hated line positions, where that sort of thing happens. I never had any problems with firing people; it’s just part of the job, nothing personal, just do it.

It seemed as if I was the same when it came to killing people. I didn’t have to like it; I just had to do it. So far, I hadn’t lost any sleep over it.

Curiously, my mother had no problems with capital punishment, either. She had a cold streak at times. I remember once when she sat on a death penalty jury and voted to give the guy the needle. He sat on death row for eight years before the Innocence Project got his DNA tested and proved he was innocent and got him released. As far as Mom was concerned, he was a scumbag anyway, so they should have fried him regardless. She didn’t bat an eye when she told me that. Mom wouldn’t have minded my killing four narcos, that’s for sure!

I saw Marilyn with a baby stroller in the hallway as they wheeled me into my room. I turned to call to her, but the orderly was moving too fast. It didn’t matter; Marilyn had seen me, too. About thirty seconds later she came barreling into my room with that stroller, followed by a nurse. The nurse was smiling, and she didn’t interfere.

Marilyn’s face was lit up, but she was also crying, and she damn near threw herself on top of me. “Oh God, oh God, you’re home, you’re home!” Thankfully she was on my right side, since all the tubes and lines running into me were on my left side. I just smiled and rubbed her back. “You’re alive! You’re alive!”

I stopped her with a big kiss, and then pushed her upright. “I have missed you so much, but I think we need to let the nurse get in here.”

The nurse, named Hawthorne according to her name tag, simply checked my temperature and blood pressure, and then told us what the visiting hours were, and then she bent down over the baby stroller and cooed. “Well, aren’t you just darling! And so well behaved, too!”

Marilyn smiled at me, and then bent down to the stroller. “Would you like to meet your son?” she asked me.

Nurse Hawthorne gasped and said, “Is this the first chance you’ve had to see your baby?” She raised my bed up so that I was sitting upright, as Marilyn extricated Charlie from his contraption.

“Charles Robert Buckman, this is your father!” Marilyn held our son up to me. He was in blue baby clothes, and had a summer weight blanket around him, and she placed him in my hands.

If I had been expecting Charlie to look like Parker, it wasn’t even close. Parker had taken after me and my mother; Charlie was more like Marilyn’s family, the men’s side, which tended to blond and stocky.

I sat my son in my lap and supported his back. He was about two months old now, and was able to hold himself upright, with some help. He didn’t make much noise, but he was looking at me and making the funniest expressions on his face, and then he gave me a big grin. Marilyn was ecstatic! “He knows he’s with his Daddy!”

“He’s probably got gas!” I replied.

That set the nurse to laughing and she took her leave. Marilyn scolded me, but I just sniffed the air, and told her I thought I was closer to the truth. I held my right thumb up in front of him and he latched onto it. He was still too young to do much more than that, but he seemed pretty normal to me. Certainly, I didn’t see any signs of Williams Syndrome! You can tell in the facial structure long before any of the other symptoms show.

I counted aloud his fingers. “All ten! What about his toes?” I asked Marilyn.

“All ten there, too.” answered my wife.

I grinned at my son. “All ten piggies? I’ll check them later!” I glanced back at Marilyn. “What about, well, you know.”

“What?”

“Well, can he count to 21?”

It took her a second, but then she rolled her eyes and groaned. “Men! You all think that’s so important! Yes, he can count to 21!”

I turned back to Charlie. “I’ll take Mommy’s word for it. I’m not going to look. Daddy doesn’t do diapers!”

“Daddy’s a wimp!” Marilyn took him back and sniffed his diaper. “Here, you get to find out now.” She handed him back to me and then dug a diaper from the diaper bag on the back of the stroller. She found a flat spot at the end of the bed and expertly changed him. She had been changing her brothers and sisters since she was big enough to pick up a baby. Before she was done, though, she held him up for me to see. “See? Twenty-one!”

“Looks like he can get to 22 and 23 as well,” I commented.

“Men!” After changing him, it was feeding time. Marilyn gave him back to me, and then dug out a blanket from the bag and draped it over her shoulder and her chest. Then she unbuttoned her blouse and took Charlie back and slid him under the blanket. She was breast feeding him!

“Well, I guess that beats a bottle,” I said. We had discussed this during Lamaze classes.

“He’s a little piglet is what he is!” Marilyn grimaced for a moment as he latched on fiercely. “Watch it buster!”

“Well, he’s a Buckman, that’s for sure!” Marilyn smiled at that. “God, you look so good. I have missed you so much!”

“I’ve missed you, too. You look terrible, though! You’ve lost a lot of weight.”

I shrugged. “It’s that delicious hospital food,” I told her. “It really cuts down on going back for seconds.”

“It’s more than that, and you know it.”

I shrugged again. “I’m home now, and with you guys. I’ll get back in shape. Hell of a diet plan, though, isn’t it?”

Marilyn turned serious. “Carl, what happened to you? You were just supposed to go to Honduras for a few months and come home. Then you were reported lost and dead, and then you were under arrest, and then you were in the hospital. I don’t understand! What happened to you?”

I sighed and told her. It took a good solid hour to explain things, since Marilyn didn’t have the military background that Featherstone did. I glossed over the part with the prisoners, simply repeating my story that I released them and fired some shots in the air to hurry them along. (Yeah, hurry them along on their way to perdition. I was sure they would be there to greet me at some point in the future.)

She was simply speechless at the end of it. Charlie had drunk his fill and was snoozing in his stroller. I finished by saying, “And that’s it. Now they have to operate on my leg and give me some rehab, and I’m out. I won’t be Captain Buckman much longer, honey.”

“After all that, they just throw you out? Like garbage? That’s terrible! Can’t you do something about it?”

I was surprised by that since Marilyn isn’t the real gung-ho type. She wasn’t really big on the Army to begin with. Maybe it was like when you are cleaning out a kid’s closet and find the toy in the back they haven’t played with in a year. You go to throw it away, and they toss a tantrum about it.

“It will be fine, Marilyn. We won’t have to move to Oklahoma now, will we?” I said, putting a good face on it. It still galled me, but I could live with it. “Seriously, I might never walk without a limp again. I’ll never have a command again.”

“And that’s important to you?” she asked.

And right then and there I knew it was. I didn’t know what I was going to do in the future, but I knew I would have to be the boss. I looked out the window for a moment and then turned back. “Yeah, it is. It’d be like working in an ice cream store and never getting to lick the scoop. I’d go crazy. Don’t worry about it, we’ll be all right.”

Marilyn gave me a very odd look as I said that. “Carl, we need to talk about that, too. I found your letter.”

“Huh? What letter?”

She reached into her purse and pulled out a big manila envelope and my jaw dropped, and my eyes opened wide. Oh, shit! That letter!

“You weren’t supposed to read that, unless, well, you know!” The envelope had a label on it specifying, ‘Open only in the event of my demise.’, and had been in my dresser, under my briefs and underwear. I rubbed my hands over my face. Most soldiers have a letter like that, at least in the combat outfits. They either have one already made up, or write it just before they deploy, or sometimes they wait until the last minute and hand it to somebody back at the base before heading out on patrol or a jump. I had written mine back after we got married, and I updated it every few months after that.

“Dear Marilyn,

If you are reading this, then you’ll know that I finally managed to make that jump without my chute on properly. Mom always said I’d come to no good, so I guess she was right all along.

You were the best thing I ever had in my life. You are better than I ever deserved. If I was to live a hundred lives, I would want you in each of them. I love you more than you can imagine. Please forgive me for not being good enough for you.

I am sorry I wasn’t a better husband to you. You deserved a better man than me. Now, with you carrying our baby, I leave you alone with him (or her) and I wish I could have seen you with him. You will be a wonderful mother, and probably a much better father than I would have been. I am so sorry for that.

Someday you will meet somebody else, a man who will see in you all the wonderful things that I saw in you. He’ll be a better man than I was, that’s for sure. When it is time for you to move on, know that I want you to be happy. You deserve a good man.

As one last note, I want you to take the inner envelope to John Steiner, in Timonium, Maryland. His address is on the label. John has been my attorney for many years, and he wrote up my will, and will help you through all the probate and paperwork. Listen to him carefully. He’s a very smart man, and a good friend.

Again, I love you beyond words and writing. You have been the best thing in my life, and know that no matter what happened to me, my last thoughts were of you.

Love,

Carl”

The inner envelope contained a copy of my will and my most recent brokerage account statements, along with written instructions to John, Missy Talmadge, and my accountant about helping Marilyn manage her money. Marilyn had opened this envelope as well. Both letters were smudged and spotted and crinkled up, and it took me a few seconds to realize it was from tears. I felt even lower than before.

Marilyn was crying as she watched me read the letter I had written her. “How can you say things like that? I love you! I’ll never find a man better than you! You know I hate it when you run yourself down like that!”

Oh, shit! I opened my arms and she collapsed against my chest, crying. In doing so, she shifted on the bed and nudged my right leg, which made me want to scream, but I held it in. Better to lose the damn thing than piss her off anymore. I just caressed her back and told her repeatedly that I loved her and was sorry for making her cry.

Eventually she relented and sat up again, once more hitting my leg, and I bit my tongue a second time. I also hit the button to call the nurse and get some morphine going! Marilyn picked up the second envelope and waved it at me. “I read through this, but I don’t understand. You have a brokerage account that’s worth millions of dollars? That can’t be right!”

I rubbed my face again and smiled at my wife. “Actually, it is. Marilyn, I’m a millionaire. A multimillionaire, actually. I’m probably worth about $35 million by now, maybe a bit more. I’m not sure.”

“You don’t know!” she asked, a look of astonishment on her face.

“Honey, it’s not like I’ve had a chance to look at the Wall Street Journal lately. It’s not just in cash, it’s in stocks, too.”

“When? How? Why didn’t you say something?”

“I was going to tell you soon, anyway. I’ve been trading stocks since I was a kid. I’m very good at it. I made my first million before I ever met you. It’s how I could buy a car and have my own apartment back when I was a teenager living in Maryland.”

“You should have said something!”

“I was going to. I didn’t tell anyone. Can you imagine the nuttiness if they’d known about this at the frat house? Or girls? How would I know if they loved me or my wallet? You loved me for me! I was going to tell you when we moved to Fort Sill. I told you I would buy you a house, right?”

“Yes,” she agreed, nodding her head.

“I was going to pay cash, no mortgage. Captains don’t have that kind of money, Marilyn. I was going to tell you then.”

Marilyn just stared at me, stunned. Finally, she just muttered, “Wow!”

“It wasn’t a lie, honey! I just didn’t tell you everything!” I pleaded with her.

She swatted me a few times with the letters, which got rid of whatever mad she had, which couldn’t have been much. “You and your sins of omission and commission! You’d have made a fine Jesuit!”

I smiled at her. “I’d never be able to handle the vows of celibacy!”

Marilyn blushed, and her eyes dropped down to my midsection. When I caught her doing that, she blushed even more. However, she recovered, and said, “Speaking of which...”

“Ah, yes, well, nothing is happening anytime soon. They’ve got a catheter in me. I have no idea when that’s coming out. Soon, I hope. What about you? Are you able to, well, you know...”

Marilyn smiled and nodded. “I’m all healed up.”

“What about the Pill? I’m guessing you’re off that still,” I asked.

“Yes. I wonder when I can start that again,” she admitted.

I grinned at her. “You’re at the U.S. Army’s premier hospital in the entire world. I bet you can find a doctor here to answer that question. In fact, I’ll bet you a million dollars that you can find a doctor here who can answer your questions!”

Marilyn’s face lit up. “But I don’t have a million dollars! What if I lose?”

I leered at her. “I’m sure we can find something else of value to wager. Maybe I’ll take it out in trade.”

Marilyn snorted and picked up Charlie who was fussing and waking up. A different nurse also came in, in response to my call for more pain meds. “You called?” she asked, pleasantly.

“My leg is bothering me. Any chance I can get something for it.”

She looked at my chart and nodded. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll bring something.”

“Thank you. Hey, can I ask a couple of questions?”

“Carl!” protested Marilyn.

“Sure,” answered the nurse, who eyed Marilyn.

I ignored Marilyn. “How long is this catheter going to be in?” I turned to my wife. “Honey, she’s a nurse. Trust me, we can ask her.”

Nurse Greghams laughed. “Very true. As to the catheter, I can’t really say. At least not until after your surgery, but you can ask the doctor tomorrow. Anything else?”

“My wife needs to go back on the Pill. Any chance you can help with that?”

Marilyn squealed in embarrassed outrage, but the nurse just laughed and asked Marilyn what brand she had used. “You’ll need to see one of the OB-GYNs, but I can call and see about getting you an appointment.”

Marilyn slugged my shoulder, and then sweetly said, “Thank you. Please.”

Nurse Greghams laughed some more and then left to get me some hospital quality meds.

It was also time for Marilyn and Charlie to leave. We had been talking the entire afternoon, and still had so much more to say. My son woke up enough to sit in my lap and play with my fingers some more, and then I kissed him and his mother good-bye. I was perhaps more enthusiastic with his mother. Marilyn promised to return early the next morning and we would talk some more. The surgeon was supposed to come along in the morning and go over things with me also, so if the timing was good, she could sit in on it.

The next day was a Sunday. Marilyn got there in time to watch me finishing my juice and toast. I was now eating normal meals, or at least as normal as hospital meals get. Part of the liquids only was that by the time I got to the hospital I had been without food for several days and surviving on Lurps for most of the time before that. If I had managed to get a real meal, I’d have puked it up in no time.

Marilyn was nursing Charlie when the surgeon came in. He had good news and he had bad news. The good news was that he wouldn’t have to amputate, and I wouldn’t need a knee replacement yet. The bad news was that I had some surgery to repair ligaments coming, and I would need rehab for months. Ultimately, I would need a new knee, and in the meantime, I would probably be able to predict the weather. He had a model of a knee and pictures of all the ligaments, and it was just gibberish to me. Worst of all, they wouldn’t know how bad it was until they cut me open.

In the early Eighties, most hospital imaging was still limited to old fashioned X-rays. While CT scans and PET scans and MRI scans had all been invented, the equipment involved was ludicrously expensive and very rare. Certainly, the Army didn’t have this stuff. It would take the coming digital revolution to bring costs down to the point where they would be commonplace. The same applied to the surgery itself. Arthroscopic surgery was still experimental. They were going to have to cut me open the old-fashioned way, with long zippers and extensive recovery time. Surgery was scheduled for Monday morning, and Marilyn was asked to stay away. I would be unconscious for hours, and there was nothing she could do; they would call her when I woke up.

Afterwards, Marilyn and I talked some more, for the rest of the day. She had a very good idea, too. “Maybe we can call Suzie and see if she can visit?”

I blinked at that. “It’s the end of November. She’s in school. You’ll have to call her and ask. Maybe she can take a bus? Or she can wait until Christmas, I’ll probably still be here then.”

“She needs a car,” Marilyn remarked in passing.

That got me to thinking. So did Marilyn and I! “You know, hold that thought. I need to dump the Impala, and you need something bigger for you and Buster. How about a station wagon for you?” Chrysler had not reinvented the minivan yet, not for a few more years.

Marilyn’s lips flapped for a moment. “Really? I can get a new car?”

“Whatever you want, honey. Well, within reason. I don’t think Rolls Royce makes station wagons.”

“Very funny! What about you?”

I shrugged. “I’ll trade the Impala in on a Caddy or a Lincoln. Something nice and big. We can have a car, and a wagon.”

“What about my little Toyota?”

“Probably won’t get much for it. Why don’t we just give it to Suzie? It’d be perfect for a college kid. She could pay the gas and Dad would pay the insurance,” I said.

“What would your parents say if they knew where it came from?”

I shrugged again. “Suzie can lie to them. That would be her problem, not mine.”

“We should call Tusker and Tessa as well, invite them down. We haven’t seen them since last year!” she said.

That was true. We had kept in touch with Tusker and Tessa since that oh so memorable wedding! They were married now (grandchildren will melt a grandparent’s heart!) and were doing well. They had both graduated, Tessa with her bachelor’s and Tusker with his associate’s in Business, and last year, on schedule, he had opened a small motorcycle repair and sales shop in Timonium. “That’s a very good idea! Give them a call and ask them to come down. We can get them a room for the night. When Suzie comes, she can stay in the suite with you, I guess.”

She nodded, but then gave me a worried look. “Do you have their phone numbers? I left my address book at home!”

“And that is why the good Lord gave us telephone operators. When you get back to the hotel, get an outside line and call the operator. You can probably get a number for Tusker’s business, and if you call the University of Delaware, they can at least find a way to get a message to Suzie. It’s too late for either of them to come here this weekend.”

Like my last trip through time and space, Suzie had applied to the University of Delaware’s nursing school. She was just now starting her junior year. In a couple of years, she would have both her BS in nursing and her RN credentials. She was about an hour’s drive from Lutherville. “Maybe Suzie can take a bus from Dover to Washington, and you can get her, or she can take a cab,” I said.

We talked about our future, now that I was no longer going to be going career in the Army. Wherever we ended up, I would buy or build Marilyn a house, and we’d get some new cars, and as soon as I could get loose from the hospital, we were going on a nice and long vacation! Beyond that, we didn’t make too many plans. We couldn’t agree on where we wanted to live. Marilyn wanted to leave the Fayetteville area (too hot, too muggy, too southern) and I refused to move to upstate New York (I spent fifty-plus years shoveling snow up there; screw that idea!)

A lot of time was simply spent getting acquainted with my son. Charlie was only about ten weeks old, but he certainly seemed to have a healthy curiosity about everything. He looked at everything! He couldn’t sit up by himself yet, but that little head and those little eyes kept turning around to watch everybody! Otherwise, he was nothing but a food processing machine. Mom’s milk went in one end, and toxic chemical waste came out the other end. What that child produced was a violation of the Geneva Conventions against gas and germ warfare! Oh, and keep your fingers and car keys out of his reach since it all went into his mouth!

Monday was not enjoyable. Since I was going to be under anesthesia most of the day, they cut my meals off the afternoon before. Marilyn kept Charlie at the hotel. I signed papers and listened to warnings and then I was asked to count back from one hundred. I got to ninety-nine and was out like a light. By the time I woke up, it was almost dinner time, and Marilyn was sitting there with Charlie by the bed. I stayed awake long enough to say, “Hello,” and then fell back asleep. By the time I woke up again, it was the middle of the night, and they were gone.

They came back first thing Tuesday morning, and we all met the surgeon. The good news was more than I could hope for. While there had been extensive damage to the joint and the ligaments, they decided to do the repairs in a single seven-hour session rather than two or three smaller sessions. That meant less time in the body shop and more time on the highway, so to speak. The bad news was that there had been extensive damage. I was going to need a couple of weeks before I could try walking on it, and a full recovery was very doubtful. My career was shot.

Two more weeks like this was going to drive me batty. We could still make plans, though. Marilyn decided to switch Charlie over to formula, and she spent a morning that week talking to a staff gynecologist about going on the Pill. Fortunately, although all of her medical records were still at the Fort Bragg clinic, Marilyn still qualified to see a doctor here. When I was able to get out of here, we’d both be able to do something about the horniness that had been attacking the both of us. We started planning my escape.

That weekend I had visitors. Suzie caught a bus back to Baltimore, but then Tusker and Tessa and little Bucky went down to pick her up, and they all drove down to Silver Springs to see us. Marilyn and I had been joking about Tusker and his family driving down on his bike, with Bucky in a sidecar, but they came down in an old Ford he owned.

That Saturday was the day my catheter came out. Suzie was there when the nurse came in. “Cool! Can I watch?”

I spluttered something incoherent. “Suzie! No!”

“Carl, don’t be so uptight. I’m a nursing student. I’ve seen penises before,” she replied.

“I don’t care how many penises you’ve seen! You’re not going to see mine!”

“You’re no fun at all.”

I shook a finger at her. “Why don’t you go home and tell Dad about all the penises you’ve seen? I’ll bet that will be a fun conversation!” She had the good grace to blush at that.

Tusker and Tessa were looking a little frazzled, but otherwise happy. Tessa was doing some part-time work at the biker bar, as well as doing the books for the bike shop and taking care of Bucky. Tusker was working all hours at the shop, and only had Sunday off. On the other hand, they seemed to be treading water with the money, and their little business was growing. They already had two full time employees and were looking for a third. Bucky had his mother’s build and features, but his father’s bright red hair, and was a good kid. He was three now and got into everything.