Trails of the Heart by Scott Ruby

Author:Scott, Ruby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

After dinner, the two sat by the campfire for a little longer. When Andy washed their dishes and returned, Rachel had gone oddly quiet, and was staring into the fire, her gaze unfocused. At first, Andy figured she was just embarrassed by what she had said before, but it had taken a while to sink in for her. After a few minutes of silence, Rachel spoke up.

“I know you might not want to talk about this again…” she began, looking up slowly. “But can I ask you something?”

“Sure. Ask away.”

Rachel inhaled slowly and drew her knees up to her chest. “It’s something you said, the last time we were out here, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot. You said it took you a long time to get over everything you saw, back when you were in the Air Force. Right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“How did you do it?” Rachel asked, her voice wavering a little. “How did you…adjust?”

That was something of a loaded question. “You haven’t been back very long, you know. It’s okay if you’re still feeling a little—”

“I can’t work out whether or not I like being back,” Rachel blurted out. “I…I just don’t know. I thought I’d be glad to be back, after everything that happened I thought I would be happy to be home, working somewhere safe and clean and…And I’m just not.”

“You want to go back to working with DBB?” Andy asked.

“No,” The answer was immediate. “God, no. But…In Haiti we were doctors, you know? We were there to treat people, to patch people up and save lives and do good. That was all the stuff I signed up to do. And now that I’m back here, I’m looking around me and realizing that we’re not all playing the same game. There are so many people who are in it for the paycheck who couldn’t give a crap about the patients. There’s so much waste in hospitals too, throwing out medication at random, things that are worth more than gold in the middle of an uprising, and I just…I don’t know,” she trailed off into silence, huffing out a sigh. “I know I have to make the adjustment. I know I have to get used to working here again, but it’s hard.”

Andy was quiet for a few moments as she took that in. She stared into the fire, watching as the orange flames licked up into the night sky, casting a glow over their campsite. After a long silence, she finally spoke up.

“You want some free advice?” she asked, without looking at Rachel. “From one person who went through something fucked up to another?”

“Sure.”

“You’ve got to find a way to move on from it. Things are going to be different here, and it’s going to take you a long time to adjust to that, but it’s something you’re just going to have to deal with. If you start trying to look at everything you see from the same point of view as when you were back in Haiti, you’re never going to be comfortable here in the U.

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