nodded again.
‘Do you have lots?’ he asked.
‘Only since Afghanistan.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘Now or in general?’
‘Now, for starters. Can I make you a hot chocolate? It’s what I would do for Summer.’
She’d stopped shaking but she still felt cold.
‘That sounds lovely but I don’t need it. I’d rather you stayed here.’
He didn’t need to be asked twice. It felt good to have her in his arms and he wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.
He leant back against the bedhead and swung his legs up on top of the quilt, stretching them out in front of him. Abi stayed curled against his chest and he kept his arm around her shoulders as he felt the steady, rhythmical rise and fall of her breathing. She seemed calmer now but he wasn’t surprised to hear that she had nightmares. He could only imagine what she would have seen in Afghanistan. What she would have been through. What he didn’t know was whether it would help to talk about her dreams or if it was best to ignore the horrors of the past in the hope that she could put it behind her. Would talking about it make it better or worse?
He couldn’t remember much from his psychology studies. What would be the recommended practice today?
He decided to try talking about it. If she didn’t want to talk to him she’d soon tell him. She didn’t seem to have a problem with telling him if she thought he had overstepped the mark or was wrong. She’d put him back in his place a couple of times already this week.
‘Is it always the same dream?’ he asked.
‘Pretty much.’
Silence fell and he thought that was it. If she didn’t want to talk about it he wasn’t going to force the issue.
She shifted her position, turning her head so she was looking at the ceiling. Had that been a protective movement designed so that he couldn’t see her face? So he couldn’t feel the dampness of her tears?
She started talking. ‘In the dream I’m in Kabul. It’s always Kabul, even if sometimes it doesn’t look like it. Sometimes it looks like LA or Phoenix but I still know I’m in Kabul. It’s hot and dusty, crowded and chaotic. There are people shouting and jostling. Traffic noise, car horns, brakes, engines revving, sirens. Big-city noises and big-city smells—diesel fumes and garbage. I always have the impression of Kabul as loud and kind of manic but then the mania goes up a notch. One minute it’s just regular bedlam, and then an explosion rips through the crowd, showering everyone with debris, intensifying the chaos. I can feel the force of the blast. It knocks me off my feet and for a moment everything is silent. In my dream I know instantly that a bomb has exploded but it wasn’t like that at the time.’
At the time? This dream was real? Or rather the events in the dream were real? No wonder she had woken up in a cold sweat.
‘The beginning of the dream is always the same,’ she continued, ‘but the actual explosion takes me by surprise every time. After the bomb explodes the dream varies. I can never change the beginning, the bomb always goes off, but what happens next changes, although it’s always bad, just different degrees of terrible, and I can’t control it.’
‘What happens next?’ he asked, not sure he was prepared for the answer, but if she needed to talk he would listen.
‘My commanding officer is there too. He’s injured and I try to help him. In my dream I crawl across the ground. I can feel glass and stones and metal cutting into my hands and knees but all I can see is Mark lying on the ground. He’s not moving and I don’t know if he’s breathing. I keep crawling but this bit varies. Sometimes I reach him and sometimes I feel like I’m just crawling for minute after minute, never getting any closer. Sometimes Mark dies before I can reach him and sometimes I get there while he’s still alive. He has a wife and daughters, sometimes they are in my dream too, but they do nothing, just stand and watch and ask me why I’m not saving him. Why aren’t I doing more? I don’t have anything to tell them except that I am trying, but the end is always the same. Mark dies and I wake up crying.’
‘You were actually caught up in a situation like that? This was real?’
She nodded. ‘We had gone into Kabul for a meeting, me, my commanding officer, Mark, and another captain. We were leaving the meeting to head back to the base. It was around lunchtime, the streets were busy as they always were, crowded with cars, trucks, motorbikes and pedestrians. Our driver was waiting on the street to collect us. He was out of the truck, holding the back door open for Mark, when there was an explosion. There was no warning, although I don’t know why I would have expected one. One minute I was rounding the back of the truck and the next I was knocked off my feet.’
‘Were you hurt?’
She shook her head and her hair brushed across his chest. ‘Not critically. When a bomb explodes there’re degrees of injury—dead, critically injured, non-life-threatening injuries and okay. Some of the blood was mine but I wasn’t badly injured. My ears were ringing but other than that I could hear nothing else for what seemed like minutes but was probably only seconds. The air was thick with dust and smoke. I was disorientated but I had worked out what had happened. A bomb had been detonated, but I didn’t know what sort or where. Not that it mattered. It had succeeded in creating the damage it had been designed for. I can remember lying there, fighting to breathe but being unable to move because I had no air. When I did catch my breath my throat and tongue were coated with dust. I inhaled and I could smell burnt flesh and the metallic tang of blood but I didn’t realise some of it was mine.
‘When I got up my leg gave way beneath me. I had shrapnel embedded in my thigh but I hadn’t realised it. My leg wouldn’t support my weight, which was probably lucky. It was a stupid idea to try to stand up. It would be safer to stay low but I wasn’t thinking clearly.’
Damien could scarcely believe what he was hearing. He’d seen images from Afghanistan but he’d never really spent much time thinking about the people who were caught up in the war. It had all seemed to be so remote. Until now. Until he was listening to Abi’s recount and feeling her tremble in his arms and seeing the fear and confusion in her eyes.
‘I could see the other captain lying on the ground ahead of me. He had already walked around to the far side of the vehicle, which had sheltered him from the force of the blast. He was groggy and probably concussed but otherwise uninjured. I thought we’d been lucky. I thought we’d escaped any real damage but it turned out that wasn’t the case. I dragged myself around to the other side of the truck, looking for the others—my CO and the driver. People were screaming now and crying. Running. Falling. It was complete chaos, there was no sense of order, just panic.
‘We needed to get out of there but when I got around the vehicle I found that our driver was dead. And he wasn’t the only one. There were plenty of dead and injured. My commanding officer had been hit. He was bleeding from his side, frothing blood from his lips. He must have thrown his arms up when the bomb exploded. It would have been a reflex reaction but it meant that he’d exposed the area under his arm, a gap in his flak jacket, and shrapnel had ripped through his chest wall. He’d sustained serious chest wounds and I knew I was unlikely to be able to save him but I had to try. There were others I could have tried to help but I didn’t. Mark was my priority, my responsibility.
‘I was kneeling in the middle of
