Quinn's Girl by Kylar Wilde

Author:Kylar Wilde [Wilde, Kylar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-06-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

After half an hour of staring out the window at the moon high in the sky, Ali heard a commotion in the next room. She hurried to Quinn’s room, finding him asleep but tossing restlessly and mumbling incoherently, obviously caught in a terrible nightmare. She could tell he was in spiritual pain and the look on his face made her heart melt. It was then that she understood the prison in which she was incarcerated was the same prison he knew. They both had PTSD and it was a monster that did not discriminate on the basis of gender, nationality or age. It was an equal opportunity destroyer.

“Quinn, Quinn,” Ali said in a rushed whisper. She was sitting on his bed and touching his forehead like a mother watching over her feverish little boy. “Are you alright?” she asked.

He woke up with a start and it was obvious it was taking him a while to get oriented. “Oh, my God,” he groaned. “I had that nightmare again.”

“What nightmare?”

Quinn rubbed his face and groaned. “It haunts me,” he said, finally focusing his eyes but sounding like someone who had the wind knocked out of him. “We were out on patrol and a sniper shot my best friend right in the head. I saw the whole thing almost as if it was in slow motion. When he fell, I wished it was me. I wished I had died and he continued to live. Ali, he had a wife and a two-year-old son. She was eight months pregnant with his little girl. All he could talk about was his family. Even in the miserable world where we lived, he showed us pictures and was full of hope.” Quinn cried. “He was due to head home in three days. Three stinking days! He was going to leave the military and work for his wife’s father in the roofing business. He had it all planned out and was studying everything about roofing that he could. He even promised that if I was looking for a job, he would find me one.”

Ali shifted her position and lay beside him but simply looked at the ceiling, like a priest quietly hearing confession.

“He was talking about roofs as we were walking. Do you know some roofs are actually gardens living on top of a waterproof membrane? That so impressed him. He told me there was this one roof in Canada that was several acres and contained thousand of native grasses and plants. It was a roof, but it was a whole ecosystem that was environmentally friendly. He was just talking about all the bees that were using that roof when the shot rang out and he fell dead right beside me. To them he was just a dirty American, but to me he was a dear friend. For a moment I just stood there and imagined the military sending someone to his home to tell his child and his pregnant wife that Daddy would never be coming home.

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