“LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR return home.”
I scoff and pull the chair away from her desk, harder than I wanted, but it earns me an inquisitive look. This is another subject I don’t want to talk about. The most anticipated return home turning into the most epic failure of all.
“Really not something I want to talk about.”
She folds her hands, much like the principal used to do when I had to report to his office. This is their “calm” look. She’s calmly going to tell me this is for my own good and that the sooner we get this out in the open the sooner we can – or I can – move on. Ryley apparently didn’t have any problems moving on.
“We landed; no one was there to greet us. I got a cab ride home. End of story.”
The doctor leans back in her chair, rocking slightly before sighing. “I know this has to be the hardest question for you, Evan. Just remember the goal.”
I close my eyes and shake my head. Never in the years that I’ve been in combat did I experience something so heartbreaking and demoralizing as the day we came home.
“It was raining when we landed. As soon as the C-130 touched down, we were out of our jump seats before the engine was shut off. Coming home from deployment is sometimes met with little to no fanfare. There are times when we get the job done, and bam, we’re right back home and in time for dinner. Other times, the wives, girlfriends and kids are there with their banners and balloons.
“When my unit returned from Afghanistan, the welcoming party was top notch. The San Diego State marching band was there. Speeches were given. We had refreshments, the whole nine-yards. What people don’t realize is that while the party is nice, we just want to be home. We want to acclimate to our surroundings. We want to kiss our women good and proper. We want to scratch our balls without the TV cameras watching us.
“Anyway, when we stepped off, nothing. Our CO had been on the bird with us and he literally patted us on the back and said ‘see you at 0800 for debriefing.’ We watched, dumbfounded, as he got into a car and drove off. He just left us there. It’s a pretty shitty feeling returning home after being gone for six years to find no one waiting for you and your CO not care how you were getting back home.”
“What’d you do?”
“Stood there, scratching our heads, wondering why there were taxis waiting for us.”
“Did you find it odd that your…” she pauses and looks over her notes. “Your CO, as you call him, left you there?”
“At the time, it didn’t really cross my mind. I was too excited to be back home.”
“Any strange looks from when you were on base?”
Now that I’m sitting here, and she’s brought up the idea that maybe the Navy is responsible, her question makes all the sense in the world.
“That’s another thing,” I add, “that strikes me as odd. We were dropped off on an empty airfield with taxis waiting to take us back to base. No one was there to collect our weapons. We had a full arsenal, and we were in the middle of nowhere. I felt like we were in a ghost town.”
“In hindsight, you were the ghost,” she says quietly.
“Apparently so,” I answer quietly. It’s a hard pill to swallow knowing that your family and friends thought you died. They mourned you, they moved on the whole time you’re fighting to free children from sex trafficking.
“And when you saw Ryley?”
“I need a break,” I say quickly before standing. “I need…”
“It’s okay, Evan. The bathroom is right there.” She points to the door adjacent to her office. My strides are long, with my steps pounding into the carpet. I open the door and step into the bathroom. It’s small and confined, but perfect for a one-person office. I lean my head against the tiles and bask in their coolness. I didn’t feel flush out in the room, but I definitely do now. I want to understand how everything became so screwed up. Who dropped the ball and why? Why weren’t more units dispatched and why were we sent to an east coast territory? None of this is adding up or making sense. River was correct to have doubts. We should’ve expressed them before we left, but we didn’t. We accepted our orders, assumed our brothers on the other units were tied up and went to do our jobs.
This doctor shows me doubt, and I hate that. I’ve never questioned the Navy or my job. I’m proud of what I do, but now I’m second-guessing this mission and why it took so long with the extraction. We went for one package that we sealed and delivered. We should’ve been on that chopper heading back with it. Instead, we were picking up the pieces of destroyed lives and for what? That’s what I want to know. How could someone do this to us?
When I come out, the doc is watering her plants. She looks at me and smiles reassuringly as she puts down the pitcher and takes a seat.
“Are you ready to continue?”
I nod, even though I’m more eager to beat my feet back to the base and find out what the hell is going on. I need to find Raskin, too. I haven’t seen him since we returned and he has to know something’s up. Did he have a bunk ready? Was there any preparation? Come to think of it, I haven’t seen my CO all week either. River, McCoy, Raskin and I need to put our heads together and figure this shit out.
“Are we almost done?” I ask, looking at the clock before she can answer me. It seems that time has come to a complete standstill, the big hand barely ticking off the minutes. I’m emotionally drained. I have been all week, but today is really taking it all out of me.
“You were going to tell me what happened when you saw Ryley for the first time.”
“Right,” I mumble as I think back to where I left off. “Um… yeah so we took a cab. River and McCoy don’t live far from us so they got out first. When the driver pulled up, I peered out the window, looking at the two-story home that we bought together and thought, ‘wow, she’s done an amazing job,’ not that I didn’t think she would, because Ryley is beyond amazing. She makes it… or made it easy to be a SEAL. Her support has always been unwavering, very solid. Again, it didn’t escape my notice that, again, the banners were missing. No ‘Welcome Home’ sign and the lack of people confused me.
“Of course, I didn’t have my keys so I had to sit on the swing and wait. Funny thing is, now that I’m sitting here talking about it, it didn’t occur to me that River and McCoy were lacking the same fanfare. The only thing on my mind in that moment was seeing Ry and meeting my son. I knew the pictures I had been receiving didn’t do him justice, and I wanted to hold him.”
“I’m sorry, Evan, I don’t mean to interrupt, but did you say pictures?”
“Yeah, each time we’d meet at a rendezvous for supplies and to extract more children, we’d get care packages, letters and photos from home. McCoy and I are the only ones with kids and that had to be the worst thing, watching our children grow up in photos. But now that I’m saying it out loud, I know that those packages didn’t come from Ryley. None of it makes sense.”
The doc shakes her head slowly and scribbles across her notepad. “Evan, I hope that you see there is something very mysterious about your deployment.”
“I’m starting to, yes.”
“Please continue.” Her hand moves in a circular motion as she speaks.
“Ryley pulled up and got out of her car with a bag of groceries in her hand. I stood and watched her as she realized that someone was on the porch. She looked at me, her expression unreadable. The bag dropped, and my reflex was to catch it. I flew down the stairs, and she gasped, stopping me dead in my tracks. I smiled, and it felt like the first day I met her all over again… until it didn’t.
“‘Hey, Ry.’” My voice cracked, ya know because I hadn’t seen her in so long. “‘I’m home.”’ It was when I reached for her that I knew something was wrong. Her eyes filled instantly with tears, and I thought, why isn’t she jumping into my arms? Why isn’t she kissing me all over?”
“‘Who… what…?’” She started shaking her head, and I tried to step forward, but she held her hand up. “‘Don’t, please don’t'.’”
“‘I don’t understand, Ryley. I know I’ve been gone a long time, but I’m home now.’”
“‘No, you don’t understand. You’re dead to us… to me… who…? How are you here right now?’”
“Her words threw me back ten steps. I hadn’t a clue what she was talking about, and she kept repeating over and over again that I was dead and not supposed to be there. I stood in the yard, watching her fall apart but she wouldn’t let me help her. She wouldn’t let me touch her.
“It’s when she started wiping her eyes that I saw her ring. It wasn’t the one I had bought, the one that I had saved a year for. This one was different. I knew then that she had given herself to someone else.”
“‘Why?’” I asked her, repeatedly. My voice was something I hadn’t recognized since my dad passed away. It only took an instant for my world to crash down around me, for my heart to drop to the ground leaving me open to every imaginable pain possible. For the first time in a long time I was crying and she was standing there matching me tear for tear.
“I asked her again, why, and she shook her head. “‘You’re dead. How is this… why?’” But I didn’t want to hear those words from her. “‘Who?’” I asked her next, and she dropped her head, covering her face with her hands. I couldn’t wait any longer for her answer so I went to her, grasping her wrists in my hand and pulling them away from her face. “‘Who gave you that ring, Ryley?’”
“‘Nate. I’m marrying Nate because you’re dead. You’ve been dead for so long. So long… why are you doing this to me?’”
“I stepped back, dropping her hands. It was like her words burned me. They did in a way.”
“‘I’m not dead, Ryley. Why would you think that?’”
“‘We buried you. We had a funeral, and you were put into the ground with honors. Other SEALs were there. Their Tridents are imbedded in your casket. How are you standing in front of me? Are you real? Are you really my Evan because I cried on your grave for months and months, and now you’re standing in front of me like nothing is wrong?’”
“‘Of course I am. I don’t know what you’re saying here, Ry. What’s going on?’”
“Her head was shaking back and forth. She was shaking, and the tears were breaking my heart. We were standing in the driveway, and it dawned on me that she was alone.”
“‘Where’s my son?’”
“‘How… How do you even know I had a boy?’”
“‘I’ve seen the pictures, Ry.’”
“Her head popped up so fast I thought it was going to fall off her shoulders. She told me he was in daycare, said that his name was EJ and that he was named after me; I told her that I knew that already. Thing is, I knew everything... well, almost everything. They did fail to mention that my fiancé had moved on though. Between her confusion and the lack of fanfare, I knew something was up, I just didn’t know the extent.”
I fist my hands into my eyes and wipe angrily at the tears. Her hand presses down on my shoulder softly, and when I pull away there’s a box of tissue waiting for me. “Thanks,” I mumble, taking a few from the box and covering my face. I’ve tried not to think about this day since it happened, and I know it’s necessary to talk about, but it’s painful. Everything about this past week has been nothing but anger and pain.