Page 46 of Surgeon's Surprise Baby
He shrugged.“I just… couldn’t.I tried to make myself but every time I tried I would remember sitting there for hours, watching, waiting.The few people I talked to were as messed up as I was.”
“So what did you do then?”
“I had no money, couldn’t hold down a job, so I lived on the street for several years.Sometimes I’d stay in a shelter but I never lasted long there.I wandered from town to town.Never staying in one place for long.That went on for a long, long time.Then I ran into someone I knew in the army.Someone who wasn’t messed up.He took me to the VA and wouldn’t leave me until I got some help.Eventually I wound up in a VA psychiatric hospital.”
“There’s a lot more to that story, isn’t there?”Ryan asked.
He shrugged.“Not really.More of the same.”
“I was a battlefield surgeon in Afghanistan,” Ryan said.“Years after you served, I did too.”
“Then you understand.”
“Yeah.I get it.”
That’s all Ryan said but she had the feeling there was a whole lot behind it that he wasn’t saying.“What about your PTSD?”Aria asked.“How are you now?”
“I’m coping.I don’t know that you’re ever considered cured.But I had a lot of intensive treatment and it helped.Once I finally got out of the psychiatric hospital I went to a group home where I could get outpatient treatment.A few months ago I started looking for you and your mother, but it took me a long time to find you.I traced you to Denver and then to Marietta.And then I had to work up the nerve to see you.To see your mother.”
Who had died.She wondered what her mom’s reaction would have been.“You were gone for over twenty years.Why even bother after all that time?Why now?”
He was quiet for a long time.She didn’t think he was going to answer.But when he did it was the saddest, most tortured tone she’d ever heard.
“I never stopped loving your mother and you.I never stopped wanting to see you.But it had been so long and I thought you were better off without me coming back into your lives.”He laughed without humor.“I don’t have much to offer other than to tell you how sorry I am.”
“What changed your mind?”
He drew in a deep breath.“I’m dying.”
Aria stared at him.“Dying?You’re dying?”
He nodded.“I have cancer.Pancreatic.”
*
Pancreatic cancer.Ryanknew the odds of survival were damn low, even with early detection and treatment.And he seriously doubted Steven had been diagnosed early on.“How advanced is it?”
“It’s everywhere.They said it’s metastatic.At most I have a few months.”He looked at Aria.“I know nothing can make up for what happened.For what I did.For deserting you and your mother.But I thought if I could just see you and your mother one last time I could die at peace.Or almost.”
“Except my mother died several years ago.”
“And you want nothing to do with me.”
“At first I didn’t.I don’t know what I feel now.I don’t know much about post-traumatic stress.”
“But you do,” he said, turning to Ryan.
“Yes.”Both as a physician and personally, although he’d never been certain he could claim to have had it.Certainly not as bad as Steven clearly had.In fact, it was amazing that the man had managed to pull out of it at all.As for Ryan, he just thought the war, and falling for his best friend’s girl, not to mention her death, had screwed him up.But he certainly knew enough veterans who had post-traumatic stress.Not all of them had made it through to the other side.
Ryan exchanged a look with Aria.She didn’t look like she was completely buying Steven’s story, but Ryan did.Was twenty years a hell of a long time?Sure it was.But who knew how long the man had lived in a fog on the streets?How long he’d spent in the VA psychiatric hospital?Or how many different VA hospitals he’d been in?When you were that fucked up, time didn’t have a lot of meaning.Besides, he’d admitted he hadn’t even looked for Aria and her mother until recently.Until his cancer diagnosis.
But Ryan was a veteran and a doctor who had experience with such things.Steven’s story wasn’t that different from many veterans.Maybe the time frame was longer, but the fact that he’d apparently come out on the other side was a real triumph.
Steven got up.“I’ll leave you now.Like I said, I don’t expect anything from you.I felt I owed it to you to tell you what had happened.I’m so glad I got to meet your little girl.She’s beautiful.”
“She is.”Aria looked down at her.“Ryan, could you show Steven out?I’m going to put Sophie down.”
They watched her leave the room with the baby.“Do you think she’ll see me again?”Steven asked.
