“How’s he going to teach appreciation for something he never did?” Laramie gestured at me. “He gonna say, ‘Go out and spread your legs for a soldier, be a patriot from your back and collect your payday?’ I don’t want anyone who didn’t serve teaching whether what we did was right or wrong. We’ve seen how that turned out.”
I glanced at Randall, whose black look held more than anger at his youngest son’s outburst. I didn’t know if that rage flared up because Laramie had soured Jackson’s welcome home, or if it forced Randall to admit he carried some opinions he didn’t like to hear vocalized. Truthfully, I didn’t even know if that look held the insidious belief that perhaps Laramie was right about people who didn’t serve, and the new member of the family in particular.
Sadler family dynamics boiled down to a blind trust and an immediate support of anyone they called kin. Randall hadn’t stopped this debate. I wondered if he’d even formed his own final opinion on the topic. By his own admission, he didn’t know what to do with a Mail Call match, and he had a definite preference for people who put their lives on the line for the United States.
His look drifted from his sons to me, and one corner of his lips lifted in a smile devoid of humor but full of wry apology. That clarified his thoughts for me. He had plenty of work to do on himself, and he knew it. This argument was the monster of his own making, and he knew that, too. He let it continue because stopping it wouldn’t end the dispute. The stinger would fester under the family skin until they worked it out, and cutting off the talk would make nothing better.
We’d arrived at the Worst Segue. The moment where I regretted my silence at all prior, better segues when I could have, I don’t know,used my wordslike an adult. Communicated the difficult parts of my past outside a raging family dispute. This, kids, is what happens when you try to run away from your past. You trip on your roots and you fall on your face.
Jackson sucked in breath to retort. This time, I cut over him.
“Excuse the interruption, please, but Ididserve,” I said.
“What?” Laramie said.
“What?” Randall added, head cocked and eye squinted in confusion.
“What?” Jackson asked, voice softer than those of the other two. One hand rested on my knee.
I took a deep breath, and wished I could sink into the floor. “I served in the Army. I had almost finished training as a doctor for Martian missions when an accident forced me into medical discharge. That was three years ago.”
Silence, until Randall’s chair creaked as he pushed it back. “I’m gonna get some beers,” he said genially. “I get the idea we’ll need ‘em.”
We did.Idid. Beer, and enough eloquence to explain to my new husband why I’d omitted this particular detail during the weeks we’d known each other.
12SOLDIER BOY
“I’d wantedto be a doctor since I was a kid, but my parents had other plans for me. Then they disowned me when I was twenty-one. I figured, hey, this is the perfect time to take my life in the direction I wanted to go anyway.”
Randall had brought beer back into a room still heavy with the hush of surprise. Jackson had stared at me with an expression that couldn’t decide between hurt and astonishment, and I felt approximately two inches tall. We both knew the other kept secrets. We’d both stated it would take time to share them. I’m not sure either of us understood the magnitude of the other’s great unknowns.
Randall sipped his beer, then asked, “Your parents disowned you? For what?”
“Kissing a boy.”
“Those fucking ignoramuses,” he snarled.
“They felt a son who got it on with other men would tarnish their reputation. I could have prevented it if I’d said the other man had initiated it, but why?” Beer helped wash that statement down. “They’re pretty traditional, and conservative.”
“No,I’mtraditional, and conservative.Theyareidiots.”
“You’re not wrong,” I replied. “Regardless, they weren’t in my way anymore. I went back to school. Got my Bachelors of Science in Biology. Hit up a pre-med program, picked up some molecular biology to go with the classes I’d taken when my parents were funding school, you know, like you do.”
Randall stared at me. “No one I have ever heard of just picks up molecular biology for the shit of it.”
“All right. LikeIdo. I’m odd.” As if they hadn’t figured that out already. “The problem was, those degrees cost a ton. I had debt out the ears and I didn’t know how I’d ever get through medical school, residency, and the start of my medical career without starving to death. Then I lucked out. My grades got me into a brand-new class on what they called Adverse Environment Medicine. This was a fancy name for ‘how to patch people up on the moon, Mars, and potentially Australia’.”
My father-in-law barked a laugh. Jackson huffed a chuckle and leaned back into his chair. Laramie had no sense of humor and stewed in his own attitudinal stench.
“I was hooked. Mars is still at the forefront ofeverything.History. Science. Medical advancements. And it’sMars!Another planet!” The beer glass was cool against my palms as I turned it between my hands. “More than that, though. That was where people needed the most help. That was what I wanted. To help. I’d grown up watching the conflicts on the news. Women and men died on Mars. They needed people like me there.”
Jackson’s hand found my knee again, and a knot in my chest released. I looked over at him to find him looking back, the hurt in his expression replaced by confusion and empathy. “So you enlisted?”
“Yep. Finished that class and almost sprinted to a recruiter. The Army is desperate for medics. My degrees were perfect for what they needed, so they cut me the deal of a lifetime. I’d join up, and they’d put me in their special fast-track program for training Mars-based medics. When I finished my training, they’d clear my debt, and I’d have my Doctorate and medical license.”
Randall chimed in. “They’ve got a fast-track medical degree now?”
“It’s new within the last couple of years. Usually, to join up as an Army doctor, you have to get your degree first. Not now.” I pointed up at the ceiling. “Medicine on Mars is a whole different game. They’d rather take you in when you hit the point of working with an attending physician. They send you through basic, get you prepared for Mars deployment, and thentheygive you an attending so you can learn both Earth and Mars medicine on the job. It’s a sweet deal. You enter at Specialist rank and work from there.”