Chapter Text
Coming home comes easy to most.
The welcome of comfort—of familiarity. The coffee cup stains on the desk and their usual golden indented rings, the creak of the 4th stair up, and scent of laundry detergent on the clean clothes you left in the drawer.
It should, by all accounts, feel good.
But on July 2nd, 2004, nothing could feel more foreign than the very place Jack Abbot called home.
————-
14 days prior : June 19, 2004 — Northern Afghanistan
The sun beamed down onto the make shift medical wing with relentless heat, occasional gusts of wind curling the fabric edges inward. Jack leaned over to check behind the curtain separating the area where he, a cot, and a tray of surgical supplies sat. Where his colleague: Glenn Fischer, had recently departed from after administering a tetanus shot to his patient.
The man receiving the injection was a twenty four year old soldier from New York by the name of Paul Castellitto. He had been walking around early that day and, in the hazy blue light of morning, hadn’t seen the rusted shovel just to his right until he had already tripped over it. In the process of going down, he wound up gashing a sizeable wound into his forearm. Without access to base he rinsed the wound with water and waited with the other men in his unit until they were able to get him to the closest medical facility.
There was a buzz in the air. It was something quiet, low, but always there. “Lieutenant Castellitto, I can see you now.” Jack noted, gloving washed hands. From round the corner the young man came. He had dark curls, now a mess on top of his head. His skin was tanned a light brown, and two small moles dotted right above his jaw. “Doctor Abbot,” he nodded, moving swiftly over to the cot before plopping down to sit on it.
Jack tilted his head, amused. “You got this bandaged up quite nicely,” the doctor remarked, looking down at the site. His voice rang pleasantly. Despite the supposed curse of saying it had been a “quiet day”, it really had been one. It was rare not to have seen more than fifteen patients by 11am. Somehow, Paul had only been the third. Paul nodded, eyes looking off to the side and through a plastic window. “One of the men in my unit carries bandage wrap with him “just in case.” He marked the saying with a gesture of quotations. Something about the lieutenant seemed younger, older, and just his age all at once. His voice still sounded round with warmth, but the crook in his brow and way he held himself rang older—like he had lived more life than he was letting on. In a time and place like this, he very well may have. The horrors you see in war will change you in ways that lack proper language. If that language did have sound, it can only be assumed that it would scar anyone else who heard the reality of what inhuman atrocities can be perpetrated by your own fellow man.
Jack glanced up at him for a moment, his eyes warm, “Smart kid.” Paul returned his gaze, “Yeah, I guess.” he said, shrugging. There was a moment of silence while Jack moved to remove the bandages. Next to him he had a cotton pad anointed with anti-septic and wound disinfectant. Oddly enough, he always found the color of anti-septic to be quite pleasant. He wasn’t even a fan of orange, or gold, or whatever name could be used for the substance, he just felt a comfortable familiarity in his own competence as to when to use it. Beside the cotton pad laid a pair of surgical scissors and violet stitching thread, it’s smooth color forming it’s visibility during later removal.
Spreading out his gloved fingers he steadied the young man’s arm, rubbing the cold substance over the surrounding area. His hand was in cool contrast to Castellitto’s warm skin. “I’m going to have this cleaned up and you’ll be on your way.” Jack smiled, receiving one in return. He knew that if he had to do his job it meant someone else was having a pretty shit day, so it never hurt to put the energy in to reassure them. He noticed how very few of the attendings he had worked with recently still held this reality true. He wondered why.
Two minutes ticked by. The only sound between them remained the soft hum of a fan located in the corner, small strips of paper attached to its cage blowing with a russel. Occasionally, Paul would adjust himself on the surface or look to Jack; only to see him focused intently. The precision held by physicians had been something that Paul admired deeply for as long as he could remember. To hold someone so gently in what could be such a terrifying place in time, all while simultaneously executing his craft and duties seamlessly. It was magic in its own way.
Paul wouldn’t have had assumed that Jack had only finished his residency in emergency medicine earlier that year. That he had doubled up his training with that needed for war field medicine. The way he moved seemed more experienced, more confident. As it happened, Jack had graduated two years earlier than the rest of his peer group, setting him ahead of the curve. He was twenty eight now.
In a different mark of his life—one that was more personal—he had been twenty two when he met Robby as a second year medical student.
Their meeting hadn’t been extraordinary—hadn’t seemed marked in the stars, or planned by divine intervention. It had occurred when Robby leaned over to Jack during a lecture and asked for a pen. When Jack didn’t have one he looked around him. Luckily, the pretentious student he had the misfortune of taking a seat next to that day had turned away. So, when presented with the opportunity, he quickly snatched a pen from out of his bag. He then proceeded to hand it to Robby with a nod and almost mischievous grin, one that he would come to love. He managed all of this while continuing to hold focus on the lecture at hand. Currently, they were discussing the progression of fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva through a case study.
Robby had awkwardly thanked him, both confused and a little amused, and the two went back to tackling the matter at hand. After the lesson, the two properly introduced themselves outside of the lecture hall. Deciding on a whim to grab coffee together before heading their separate ways, they chatted and came to learn they shared quite a bit in common.
From a shared interest in going into emergency medicine, to the fact that both of their fathers remarried younger women once they had been handed off to other relatives to care for them, it wasn’t at all hard to make conversation with someone who seemed to get the other so naturally. It was decided that day that being study partners seemed like a good decision. A friendship followed, and an eventual realization that neither men were as straight as they had thought previously followed that.
“Are you married?” Paul questioned quietly, simply making small talk after seeing a ring linked onto the chain around Jack’s neck, it’s silver glinting next to his dog tags. This brought him back to the present with alarming speed. “Oh-! Uhm, yeah.” He muttered, completely caught off guard. He then realized that ““Oh-! Uhm, yeah.”” isn’t exactly a phrase that evokes confidence in someone asked what their own marital status was.
“I am.” He said again, this time more firm as a means to seem less unsure. It instead seemed uncomfortably intense. He made sure to look Paul directly in the eye, which only made the already stillness of the room feel even more awkward. The truth was that the ring on his dog tags hadn’t been worn to match someone else’s for nearly a decade.
Jack and Sarah grew up together. They were close friends, and upon becoming teenagers labeling each other as “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” just seemed like the next natural step. Like a game with levels, it just made sense in terms of natural progression. Though the romantic feelings they had for each other may have stayed isolated within a twelve month window from 9th to 10th grade, the mutual love and raw understanding they had for one another didn’t die with it. As time went on, the leaves fell and bloomed again, and Sarah’s health declined. It was discovered that she had a malignant tumor spanning a majority of her spinal cord, one reaching up into her cerebellum, and spilling over into the gap between hemispheres—the corpus callosum—of her brain. They tried everything they could to eliminate the tumor, or maybe just delay the inevitable.
Jack said yes when she asked to marry him. She didn’t want to die without experiencing what it was like to have a wedding. He could grant her that much, even if it was all he could offer.
The reception was small. Family from both sides, and a couple friends. They decided to have it in their home town, Austin, Texas, just after high school graduation. Sarah used to love kayaking on Lady Bird Lake. They both knew it was the beginning of the end—that they weren’t in love in the way marriage was supposed to happen. But that didn’t matter, not in any way that could count. It gave her one of the happiest days in her life, even if at the very end of it. In turn, it gave Jack a chance to love and cherish exactly what he was losing.
The idea of kissing their best friend was mutually repulsive, so they settled on hugging at the altar. The kind of hug that seeps deep into your bones; the kind that turns the marrow to honey, and calcium to melting sugar. He could feel how frail she had become when he held her closely. How the intricate white lace in the back of her dress stretched out over thin skin. How the warmth he once clung too on childhood hiking trips felt distant. How the strength that once coursed through now only showed in her will, rather than her frame. He couldn’t care less.
Sarah passed away two months after their ceremony. He was kneeling by her bedside when she let her last breath become air. The scent of lavender had been her favorite, and the sterile scent of disinfectant washed it out of her perfume.
It never felt right to just stop wearing the ring. Robby had asked about it one time. They were laying in bed, chests bare and legs covered by a thick red blanket sprawled over the two of them. The air outside was cool in late autumn, Robby’s skin perfectly warm in contrast. His hand reached for Jack’s, fidgeting with the ring around his finger. Jack answered. He had never met a man more understanding, and supposed he had never realized it until Robby told him that he would be insane to ever ask him to stop wearing it.
Robby had proposed shortly before they finished residency. It was decided that rather than a ring for Jack to bring abroad, a watch would be a better substitute. Since Jack had been sent off only eight months after finishing his residency program in Pittsburgh with Robby, it was best to be discreet. If someone were to turn the face over they’d see engraved “J & M” above a small infinity sign. Beside each letter; two dots of pearl and tanzanite—Jack and Robby’s respective birth stones. It seemed a better plan to be discreet. From coded letters, references to a “friend” or “cousin” back home, and hidden shows of affection; it was the only way to make it in a time where the military would have Jack discharged if he were to be outed. “Don’t ask, Don’t Tell” was in full effect, and would be for years past Jack’s time in the military.
Jack was about to finish up the stitching when he glanced back, readying himself to complete the suture by cutting the thread. He held the surgical scissors carefully, opening its metal jaws above the section in need of clipping. Just as the violet thread snapped apart it seemed that the world caved in with it.
Sudden movement, sudden sound. Sudden burning filled both men’s lungs, being flung through the open expanse without regard. The first thing he felt was the raw scraping feeling of splitting skin surrounded by shattered concrete. Rebar stuck through the rock hard surface in jagged angles. Smoke thick with dust flooded his lungs.
The shock hit before the full force of the pain did. Maybe it was adrenaline, or maybe it was disbelief. He couldn’t think clearly enough to pin point whatever was happening. Fifteen seconds ago he was stitching up a man no more than four years younger than him. A man who trusted him with his health. With the seemingly safe calm surrounding them. Most importantly, where Jack was—No, where Paul was—could be known to neither men.
“F- Fuck.” Jack gasped, voice small. Pounds of rubble pinned his chest down, weighing down the lungs he desperately tried to fill. Trying to crane his neck down at the rest of his body, it was glossed over horror that filled him when he not only could see but also /feel/ the surgical scissors he had just been wielding; their girth now firmly planted in his lower abdomen.
He soon realized that his lower right leg seemed obstructed. He shifted as much as possible in his position to see it. When he did, the only thing he could remember is feeling like it should hurt more. Or, maybe, this is what being dead felt like. That you could see your corpse and the carnage done to it, but couldn’t yet feel it. Like some kind of divine punishment, or conversely a form of salvation. These were the what the fragments of thought that Jack Abbot could hold together in that moment formed.
Between the darting shadows, crumbling rock, dust, screams and sirens he viewed what would turn out to be the remains of his leg. Ribbons of muscle spilled out from just below his right knee. Tendons pulsed and spasmed, blood pooled out in thick, oozing waves.
Upon this sight the skin in the back of his neck felt like it was being boiled. Like his lungs, already compressed, were deflated, with no true way to replenish the escaped oxygen. What he had trained for was to help in this exact situation. To himself usher into the scene, help the wounded from the rubble, and do his job. Yet for some reason only God knows, he was frozen. The years of extensive training, of experience, all rendered null when it was him who would soon be the patient. That was, of course, if blood loss, infection, or suffocation didn’t kill him first.
One word flashed into his mind. Adrenaline. It now made natural sense that his inability to feel the agony he should be in was in fact a result of his nervous system being flooded with raw, coursing adrenaline.
“Oh fuck- Oh fuck- Oh God.” He breathed, bringing his wrists to his eyes in attempt to clear the dust from his sight. Another gasp came, followed by a low, shaky, “Just move, Jack. Just—Just fucking move.”
Pain stakingly he clawed up and out. Moving pounds of rubble off his chest with aching, bleeding arms. It was then, from thirty feet away, he saw him. Paul. Crumpled over himself, dangling on his side. He was clearly trying to speak, but whatever his message was lost in the coughing, vomit and ceaseless exhaustion his body emitted.
It was at that moment that he concluded that he couldn’t let himself die.
He couldn’t let Robby be left alone on the other side of the earth.
He couldn’t let himself die when a young man was right there, and he could at least /try/ to help. He could at least try to save him.
He tried to stand, leaning his hand on a pile of rubble. He managed to move towards him less than a foot before collapsing. His balance was shaken, his own body suddenly foreign. Then, a scream.
He had been desensitized to screams for the most part, but this was something different. This was something that felt so viscerally real in a way that in all of these years of days spent dire circumstances he had only felt once before. The desperation, the fear, and most of all the true familiarity that all made the person sound so unmistakably human. It’s different when you’ve called their name as friend.
“Help!” Jack shouted, voice falling off halfway through. “Please—help! We’re over here!” He choked out again. His left shoulder slumped forward, hands shaking and grabbing at the loose, dry dirt beneath his palms. It scraped under his fingernails, mingling and congealing with muddled blood.
Slowly, he stumbled closer. Intermittently crawling his way over piles of rock, dust, rebar, and metal wire. Bit by bit—he made it to Paul.
He nearly threw himself next to him, grunting out gasps in burning white agony. The adrenaline that had previously filled his gaping wounds had since spilled out, leaving the pain aching, cracking and splitting wide open.
“Hey—Hey, Paul. Paul,” he stammered, taking shallow breaths between each word. “Paul, I’m right here. I’m right here, okay?” He shook the other man’s arm, trying with everything in him to wake the unconscious soldier. He had sustained a blow similar to Jack, but when the blast had taken place it had launched Paul backwards and through a—now collapsed—shelf made with metal tubing.
In a blend of exhaustion and visceral pain, Jack began to feel his own frame start to break over the younger mans. His breath caught jagged in his chest, desperate to find a pulse. His hands shook as he moved them to check his femoral pulse, “Please, please. It’s going to be okay, alright? We’re—We’re gonna’ make it. People are coming.” Jack half consoled through a breaking sob, almost begging—although he wasn’t sure to who. His statement sounded almost like a question in the last sentence. Was he even sure people were coming? How could he promise a reality only worth praying for?
His hands—bleeding, dirty—moved over to Paul’s lower half, gently pressing two fingers over his femoral artery. A pulse. “Thank fucking-“ Jack coughed out with half a smile, more light headed than he had ever been before. Suddenly dizzy, eyes heavy, the sound of foot steps echoed in the distance, growing closer and closer. Louder and louder.
Just before he too lost hold of the world around him, Jack managed to hear two final things; the newly familiar sound of a bomb howling in the distance—and a man’s voice.
“They’re over here!”