I Confirmed the Deployment That Broke Him Chapter 09

I Confirmed the Deployment That Broke Him Chapter 09

Leo had nothing left. Everything he hadn’t said dissolved into one long, quiet exhale.

I went back to my apartment at the research center, took a long shower, and slept through the night. For the

first time in years, I didn’t dream about explosions or operating tables.

Five years passed.

My research on cross-cultural intervention models for war-related PTSD was incorporated into the Global Mental Health Action Plan. On the day of the project’s final presentation, a light rain was falling.

I gave an exclusive interview to The Journal of Medicine, and they asked why I’d moved into research instead of staying in frontline clinical work.

I told them that every doctor who comes back from a warzone owes it to the ones who didn’t make it back, to turn what they survived into something that could be taught.

After the interview, I slipped out early and took the elevator to the observation deck at the top of the building.

Lake Serenity stretched out below, and the snow-capped mountains beyond it were faint through the mist. The platform had been renovated, but the view was unchanged.

Someone was sitting in the lounge area, and a cluster of young research assistants nearby kept sneaking glances at him. I stopped. Their faces were open with curiosity, and something very close to awe.

It was Leo. I walked over.

Leo was on a video call. He was telling someone on-screen that he’d already had the team draw up three response plans for the new Ebola strain, telling the Minister he’d personally oversee border screening.

He ended the call and closed his laptop, and then he looked up and saw me.

I smiled and nodded. “It’s been a long time.”

He froze, then recovered quickly. His voice was steadier than I remembered it.

“Professor Lane, congratulations. Having your research incorporated into the global action plan, that’s a

remarkable achievement.”

I gestured toward the armchair across from him, and we sat down.

Sitting across from him like that, I thought of a field hospital in the Republic of Serevia years earlier, the two of us sitting side by side, waiting for an emergency supply drop.

Leo said he’d followed every paper I’d published over the years.

“I couldn’t let myself stop,” he said. “I drove the foundation’s aid network to seventeen countries, all of it just to feel like I deserved to be in the same room as you.”

He paused and looked out at the rain. He said that sitting here with me today, he understood, no matter how

much he’d built, he could never catch up to who I’d become.

He talked for a while. His words no longer had the sharp, arrogant edge they’d had when he was younger.

What remained was restraint, and the particular kind of exhaustion and endurance that only people who’d

lived on the front lines could carry.

I listened and nodded now and then.